On April 16th of this year, production settlement statements began to be published from a new settlements system deployed by MISO, which initiated the replacement of its existing system that was at the end of its life-cycle. The new platform offers a host of additional benefits to market participants, including:
- Reduced cost of ownership
- More easily implemented settlement changes
- Reduced time to investigate and resolve issues
- Provision of additional download options for market participants
Future options that may be available with the new system are the ability to query for market data, including data not today available in the settlement statements. Currently, participants download settlement files containing a defined set of market settlement data.
A key focus for MISO in executing this upgrade was to simplify processes and make things easier for its members. Small examples of this were the ISO’s removal of settlement data points that were no longer being used. And, to minimize the impact of the transition on market participants, MISO kept the settlement statement output in the new system the same as its predecessor.
User Testing & Parallel Operations
In March, prior to go-live, sample statements from the new system were published, allowing users to test the loading and processing of the new files. MISO conducted (internal) parallel operations during early April, comparing the statement output between the new and existing system. During that period, a known issues list was generated that proved to be a valuable reference for market participant and for PCI, which worked closely with our many MISO users to identify issues and ultimately deliver a software update to make the production implementation as seamless as possible.
Go Live & Post-Go Live
Overall, the transition to the new settlement system has been smooth and did include a one week (planned) contingency period during which settlement statements were published from the previous and replacement systems. That too, proceeded well and, at no time, was there a need to shut down the new system and revert to the previous one. As with any project of this scope, there were inevitable “bumps” encountered through the testing and deployment process so, MISO will continue to monitor their documented list of known, lower priority issues and evaluate any new ones that might come up.
Lessons Learned
MISO’s settlements system upgrade experience has already proven to be quite useful for PCI and taught us many lessons that we will be able to leverage when other ISOs engage in similar projects, like those SPP and PJM are planning right now. During MISO’s transition, PCI saw the most impact from the following list of items, many of which – if not all – will be focus areas for future settlement system upgrades in other ISOs.
- Review as soon as possible the impact of removing settlement data points retired by the ISO
- Settlement determinants that previously were not in the statement may now be zero, or determinants that were zero may now not be in the statement
- Settlement determinants may be published in a different order within the settlement files
- Settlement determinants may be missing in the statement
- Daily settlement determinants that should have a single daily value have 24-hours of data
- Settlement flags in the statement with an incorrect value, such as a “false” instead of “no”
