Investors need a more rapidly evolving transmission environment for rational economic evaluation of merchant plant development or refinancing. The NOPR does not provide certainty for them, but it certainly points in the directions in which power and market opportunities may flow. Utilities which planned to remain substantially vertically integrated, for example, within transmission constrained or holding company territory domains, may be expected to weigh in on just what shape RTOs should take, so that their embedded option asset values are preserved. Big industrials and power marketers may see negotiating swamp rather than granite foundations in the Order. Such are the virtues and vices of the NOPR's trying to solve current problems, leaving open the future and refereeing the present.
Privateers can catch cold from the drafts blowing through real time open architecture rulemaking.