Public Service Company of New Mexico filed a request to join the Western Energy Imbalance Market on Aug. 22, noting that a transition to the system’s more flexible supply resources could see benefits soar to $21 million by 2024. Public Service Company of New Mexico said that it seeks to use the imbalance market’s intra-hour trading to optimize the use of the growing amounts of renewable energy supplies on its system, noting an exponential jump in wind and solar generation in the state and throughout the western region. Public Service said it seeks to start making investments in early 2019 so as to begin trading in the imbalance market by the spring of 2021. The New Mexico Public Regulation Commission opened an investigation in October 2017 to consider the feasibility for the utility to join a larger market to benefit customers. The energy imbalance market is an automated system that secures the lowest-cost energy to serve real-time customer demand over a broad region spanning across multiple western states. Public Service Company of New Mexico is a unit of PNM Resources Inc.