My Wednesday column was about how managers of the Mid-Atlantic grid have repeatedly silenced a regulator responsible for making sure electricity generators aren't reaping huge, monopoly profits in an increasingly deregulated business. Joseph Bowring, market monitor for grid overseer PJM Interconnection, said his bosses muzzled him numerous times after he raised concerns about potential "market power" or monopoly profits being pocketed by owners of generators. Bowring also complained that PJM wasn't giving him the resources he needed to do his job. It seemed like an untenable arrangement that needed to be ended. I closed the column by quoting Robert A. Weishaar, a lawyer who represents industrial electricity customers, saying the relationship between Bowring and PJM needs "substantial structural reform."

Ask and you shall receive. (Maybe.) Today the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission made preliminary proposals to remove monitors such as Bowring from the supervision of the grid managers and make wholesale electricity markets much more open to the public. Market monitors would report directly to FERC and interact frequently with state utility commissions. Public service commissions could even obtain some of the now highly-secretive bid information and other data from grid managers. The proposals are nowhere near being final, but FERC is finally starting to move in the right direction.

A selection from the proposals:

-- Remove the market monitoring unit from RTO/ISO (grid management) operations.

-- Require that the MMU (market monitor) advise the Commission and other stakeholders of any design flaws and report to the Commission any tarriff violations it believes may have been committed by the RTO or ISO.

-- Regular conference calls among the market monitor, interested state commission and FERC staff.

-- Require RTOs and ISOs (grid managers) to post information that would facilitate long-term contracts.

-- Release of offer and bid data, with a lag period. Release would mask market participants' identities.

-- Subject to certain limitations, state regulatory commissions within an RTO or ISO may request and receive information from the RTO's and ISO's market monitoring unit.