By Amanda Durish Cook

CARMEL, Ind. — MISO is scaling back a proposal to develop a multiday energy market, opting instead to create multiday forecasts intended to provide generators more advanced insight into ramping up for future day-ahead commitments.

The change takes the potential for multiday make-whole payments out of the equation.

The proposed effort will forecast price signals a week in advance but leave unit owners the option of whether to abide by them. As a result, MISO has scrapped the idea of providing make-whole payments to units that follow the RTO’s recommended commitment. MISO has also pushed back the target go-live date from 2019 to 2021 but still expects the effort to yield $30 million to $45 million in annual benefits once implemented. (See MISO Researching 30-Minute Reserves, Multiday Commitments.)

MISO Markets System Analyst Chuck Hansen said the RTO will assemble a cost-benefit analysis in 2022 or 2023 that could make or break the case for creating financially binding multiday commitments — after it collects 18 months of data using the multiday forecast.

Until then, the RTO sees comparable value in producing seven-day forecasts to influence generator commitment decisions without pressure, Hansen said. Market participants likewise sought to have the multiday market forecast before attaching financial commitments to it.

“There’s an opportunity here from a MISO fleet perspective to improve commitment decisions,” Hansen told stakeholders at a Feb. 8 Market Subcommittee meeting.

MISO’s current day-ahead market construct is not designed to forecast economic commitments beyond the next day, leaving units that have long leads or high start-up costs unable to economically commit in the market. Hansen said only 22% of the RTO’s capacity is economically committed in the day-ahead market, with the remaining 78% committed before the day-ahead market on a must-run basis, creating a prime opportunity to improve commitment decisions made before the day-ahead run. He also said a multiday forecast could be useful in scheduling weekend natural gas purchases and scheduling pumped storage resources.

Hansen added that MISO does already complete a multiday reliability look-ahead, but it’s solely focused on reliability and ensuring sufficient capacity and does not make suggestions based on economics.

MISO will begin working on conceptual design of multiday forecasts in 2019, Hansen said.