In the September Markets Committee Meeting, ISO-NE discussed winter fuel-security concerns with a focus on the objectives and design principles for developing a market-based solution to improving energy security in the region.
Primary Drivers
- Industry and policy trends are changing the makeup of the New England power system.
- ISO-NE is meeting its regional resource adequacy requirement for capacity based on expected summer peak demand. However, there is concern about the region’s ability to overcome emerging energy security problems in the winter. Contributing to this concern is Exelon Generation’s announcement to that it intends to retire the Mystic Station generating units in 2022.Â
- In accordance with FERC’s Order EL18-182-000, ISO-NE must develop and file improvements to its market design to better address regional fuel security by July 1, 2019
- ISO-NE suggests three broad objectives that define the desired outcomes for efforts to improve winter energy security:
- Risk Reduction
- Cost Effectiveness
- Innovation
Design Princples
To satisfy these broad objectives, ISO-NE has identified several design principles that can usefully guide market-based solution concepts and, ultimately, proposed enhancements to the ISO’s existing markets design. These are:
- Product definitions should be specific, simple, and uniform
- Transparently price the desired reliability attribute
- Specify and incent desired outcomes
- Sound forward markets require sound spot markets
- Compensate similarly all resources that provide the desired reliability attribute
Discussion of a conceptual approach starts now (October 2018) with final PC voting to be held in June, 2019.
This improvement has a potential of impacting multiple participant workflows. PCI will follow the change to ensure all the corresponding changes are implemented in PCI’s Northeast GenManager platform  to provide complete front office and back office functionality in sync with the change go-live at ISO-NE.
