MISO said last week that it is seeking ways to help slow-starting units make more informed commitment decisions but won’t plunge into developing a financially binding forward market anytime soon.
Senior Market Engineer Chuck Hansen said the RTO is using the umbrella title “enhancements for long-lead units and self-commitments” instead of forward market mechanisms.
“There’s really no acronym for this,” he said. “We can think of this as understanding information ahead of the day-ahead market.”
The effort may include new price forecasts and allow longer run times.
MISO is exploring the market system and settlement impacts of allowing unit owners to increase their minimum run times from the current 24-hour limit, Hansen said.
The grid operator is also investigating using a vendor to produce multiday price forecasts on future locational marginal prices.
“There’s no ISO that does this,” Hansen said. “The question is, if MISO works with vendors, could it produce a better price forecast than what vendors can do with publicly available information?”
He said this year MISO will issue requests for more information from vendors to see what would be involved in generating such a forecast.
The grid operator is also considering publishing the additional 12 hours of its commitment engine results as a heads-up for operators. The RTO currently publishes only the first 24 of the 36 hours of data computed by the commitment engine. The additional 12 hours would be considered strictly advisory in nature.
Hansen said MISO will devote time to improving its existing multiday operating margin forecast. The RTO late last year began publishing a first edition of its multiday operating margins, which predicts supply conditions six days in advance. The multiday forecast is intended for informational purposes only and is not a multiday financial market.
Hansen said MISO could incorporate seven days of renewable forecast information at the subregional level into the multiday forecast. In the future, it could break renewable predictions down to local resource zones or local balancing authorities, provided the forecasts don’t reveal market participants’ private information.
The multiday forecast could also include color-coded reliability targets, emergency resource availability and amounts of must-run committed capacity, Hansen said.
MISO is also considering putting more of the onus on its members and may require them to make a “reasonable effort” to give the grid operator more notice on offers, schedules and when units can return from derates or outages.
Hansen said none of the ideas are final, and MISO is doing more research to discern which ones are the most helpful and feasible. He said he would return to a future Market Subcommittee meeting to discuss the RTO’s inclination.
