By Amanda Durish Cook
MISO’s replacement of its market settlements platform is complete, with the RTO now settling at five-minute intervals.
The RTO reported “smooth and uneventful launches” for both the new platform and settlement time. Officials said the $10.3 million platform replacement is yielding more value than originally expected, though MISO is collecting more financial data through the end of the year before it announces the savings.
MISO rolled out five-minute settlements for weekly billing last month, later than most RTOs/ISOs, owing to extra time needed to replace its settlements platform and test the new program with stakeholders. (See MISO Wins Delay on 5-Minute Settlement Roll-Out.) Last year, the RTO billed $27 billion worth of market-based charges on an hourly basis to more than 450 market participants for the day-ahead market, real-time market, financial transmission rights and its resource adequacy construct.
Executive Director of Market Operations Shawn McFarlane told the Technology Committee of the Board of Directors on Aug. 21 that many settlements corrections are now automated, freeing up settlement analysts’ time. The time to make a settlement recalculation after correcting data has dropped to about 10 minutes from four hours.
“We’ve got some great results,” Kevin Caringer, executive director of MISO’s IT team, told board members.
The new settlements platform also allowed MISO to implement five-minute intervals in about three months, versus the originally estimated nine months, McFarlane said. He added that the RTO is also expected to spend less time coding to make changes on the new settlements system. He said coding changes will likely be necessary as MISO continues its multiyear project to entirely replace its market platform. (See MISO Platform Replacement Risks Delay, Budget Overrun.)
McFarlane said MISO sent market participants sample statements several times during testing of the new interval time, receiving input to correct issues before the program went live.
“This is an important step forward for MISO … that improves the efficiency of our market operations and ensures pricing transparency for the energy being delivered in real time,” McFarlane said.
The committee praised management for better-than-expected results.
“It’s very impressive to see a project of this magnitude come to light,” Director Theresa Wise said.
“Delaying the implementation so that we were in lockstep with stakeholders was a very good decision,” Director Baljit Dail said.
MISO also plans to replace its transmission settlements system in 2019. The system financially settles transmission customers’ use of the transmission system in monthly bills.
