By Amanda Durish Cook

CARMEL, Ind. — MISO said it will combine several data sets to create a new and comprehensive multiday operating margin forecast.

The forecast would provide anywhere from a 72-hour to a week-ahead supply-and-demand forecast, stakeholders learned at a Market Subcommittee meeting Thursday.

MISO market analyst Chuck Hansen said as the RTO relies more on load-modifying resources and intermittent resources, a multiday, “volumetric” forecast becomes more helpful to identify operating issues days in advance.

The RTO is not proposing to tie financial commitments to the forecast, which would instead be considered purely informational, intended to aid market participants in supply decisions. However, the new effort has parallels to MISO’s 2017 talks on the possibility of a multiday energy market, a project currently “in hibernation,” according to Hansen. (See MISO Scales Back Multiday Market Proposal.)

But the proposed idea is still in its conceptual stage, and MISO hasn’t settled on which data will inform the forecast.

MISO so far envisions a three- to seven-day forecast with either system-level or regional data aggregation that would be updated daily. The RTO envisions it will pull together load forecasts, intermittent resource forecasts and known available capacity, allowing for outages, lead times for offline resources, operating reserve requirements and interchange schedules.

“There’s a desire in MISO to create best-in-class operating margin forecasts,” Hansen said.

He said MISO could also predict flows on the regional settlement path, estimate behind-the-meter contributions and anticipate stranded capacity. The idea is to work in several data streams to create the most sophisticated forecast.

Customized Energy Solutions’ David Sapper asked if MISO already compiles all the data it envisions using to inform the forecast.

Hansen replied that it currently calculates some, but not all, of the information.

“It’s not a formalized process. There’s no report that kicks out this kind of information,” Hansen said.

MISO currently publishes a look-ahead by region report, which forecasts seven days of hourly load and outage data and separate 48-hour hourly wind forecasts.

But its existing reports don’t contain a quantification of operating uncertainty, Hansen said.

“This information is increasingly becoming more important to market participants,” he said.

Hansen said MISO is informally reaching out to stakeholders for suggestions and that he will return to future Market Subcommittee meetings to refine forecast components.