APX is pleased to present the current and future activities of the CAISO Market Redesign and Technology Upgrade (MRTU). This issue includes:
April 1, 2009 is the MRTU go live date with the first Day Ahead market scheduled to run on March 31, 2009. The CAISO filed their 60 day readiness filing with FERC on January 16, 2009. In that filing, while indicating that in general the CAISO systems, processes and people are, or will be, ready for an April 1 Market Start, 13 key areas were cited that require resolution. Among the 13 the broadest reaching are issues related to the dispatch of resources in real-time, pricing and settlement of certain types of resources and operational issues such as the calculation of Available Transfer Capability.
As the go live date approaches there are several important dates that require the attention of Scheduling Coordinators and Market Participants. First among these is February 27 which is the final date to submit Masterfile Resource Data Template (RDT) updates to the CAISO. The Masterfile will be frozen from March 17 to April 30, 2009. As such, any resource updates that need to be made prior to May 1, 2009 need to be submitted by that date. Second is the CAISO requirement that current production schedules be submitted simultaneously into the MRTU environment beginning March 15, 2009 (with recent discussion that this date could be moved up to March 1), This requirement exists to ensure that the topology of the network will be the same when the conversion is made from the current market systems to the MRTU systems.
The CAISO held a MRTU cutover walkthrough on January 22 to explain all the steps and the timing of steps as it makes the final switch from the current market to MRTU. Included in the walkthrough were the specific times and dates that the market systems are available for MRTU binding Day Ahead Bids and Schedules as well as when the current real-time systems will send their final dispatches and when the MRTU real-time system will begin. Further there was discussion regarding what and when systems would revert back to the current markets if there is an unforeseen problem during the cutover process. APX will contact clients directly to communicate critical dates and times for the cutover process including the state of the APX systems.
MRTU market simulation transitioned from Integrated Market Simulation Update 2 to Parallel Operations at the beginning of the year. During parallel operations, most Scheduling Coordinator activity is unstructured and the CAISO is using the current system demand forecasts to operate the Day Ahead as well as the Real-time markets. The Day Ahead market has been operating in a manner that is acceptable for production although there continue to be pricing issues that would not be expected during production. It isn’t entirely clear if the pricing issues are a result of market simulation participant behavior or operational issues that are yet to be reconciled.
The real-time simulation has improved in that five-minute interval solutions are produced consistently, but the corresponding dispatches don’t always make sense. This can in part be attributed to the source for the starting point for the RT dispatch as the CAISO is switching between their production Energy Management System (EMS) and a simulated input of resource output. For the period of January 20 through the 26th, the CAISO reports a 95.6% success rate for real-time solutions.
Settlements, while showing marked improvement during December and January, still present the biggest challenge to market participants. Despite the fact that the market systems have been producing consistent results during the period, some charge codes that would be expected to be minimal, have been extremely high. A calculation error for Unaccounted for Energy (UFE) resulted in unreasonable charge amounts, and error which has been fixed since January 1. An incorrect price for congestion, which created market impacts upwards of $60 million during the December simulation invoice period, was corrected beginning January 12. Further contributing to higher charges was the default meter data that the CAISO was using for demand settlement. Unless participants submitted meter data for their simulation activity, the CAISO was creating meter data that was 110% of scheduled demand. As of January 14, the CAISO default value for demand meter data is 103% which should significantly reduce the impact of load based charges.APX released version 0.7 of MarketSuite on January 12 which included addition of new functionality and further refinements over previous versions. Added functionality includes updated features in Checkout Summary and Bid/Offer and back-end changes designed to improve the return of bid status and post market results. While the current version of Market Suite allows clients full access to MRTU simulation, planned releases prior to MRTU go-live will round out scheduling and trading functionality.
Completion of fully functioning settlements continues to be a challenge for APX and other market participants. In part this is due to continued updates to the CAISO settlement documentation as well as the development of detailed calculation algorithms at APX. At this point APX does have several settlement reports available that provide a view into settlement statement charges and the underlying determinants to help clients analyze simulation results.
The Platform Explorer application of MarketSuite provides clients full access to all data files sent to and returned from the CAISO. This includes Day Ahead and Real-time schedule, bid and trade files, as well as market results. These files will be retained for an extended period of time providing month end and settlement reconciliation documentation without requiring download and archiving of data by the client. In particular this allows quick access to SIBR data which is only retained and made available for seven days beyond the trading day.
If there are any questions regarding access to or the use of the APX MarketSuite, please call Cris Gallegos. We are more than willing to provide your company with a refresher course and demonstration of the APX MRTU software.
Contact your Account Manager Cris
Gallegos (408.517.2154) for more
information.
About APX, Inc.
APX provides technology, strategic consulting, and expert operational services to assist wholesale power market participants reduce costs and improve performance in power scheduling, settlement, market operations, and demand response programs. Clients include utilities, merchant companies, financial institutions, retail service providers, ISOs/RTOs, and other electricity market participants.
APX is also the leading infrastructure provider for environmental and energy markets in renewable energy and greenhouse gases including carbon commodities. Providing a bank and mint for environmental commodities, the APX Environmental Market Depository™ is trusted to create, track, manage, and retire renewable energy certificates (RECs), energy efficiency and conservation certificates, carbon offset credits such as verified emissions reductions (VERs), and greenhouse gas emission allowances.
More information is available at www.apx.com or contact us at 408.517.2100.