SPP has responded to stakeholder feedback by making several tweaks to its redesigned website.

Many of the improvements were to the site’s search function, which now returns results sorted with the most recently posted documents first and includes the ability to filter results by file type.

After logging in to their profiles on the site, users are now returned to the page they were previously viewing, rather than being taken to their profile page. Changes have also been made to simplify registration for meetings and other events.

Calendar (ICS) files sent to users after meeting registrations now include hotel information and have been reformatted to display all information in a more readable manner.

The RTO is accepting feedback on the revamped website, which went live last month, via email. (See SPP Unveils Redesigned Website.)

The RTO said its website project team is already at work on another set of improvements, to come in the next several weeks.

ECC, Gas-Day Testing to Begin with ‘Big Bang’

SPP staff told stakeholders last week to expect a “big bang” testing approach — an apparent reference to the complexity and breadth of the systems involved — next summer and fall as it continues to develop the markets system’s enhanced combined-cycle (ECC) software. (See “Enhanced Combined-Cycle Project Moves Forward” in SPP Board of Directors/Members Committee Briefs.)

The ECC project, intended to provide more sophisticated modeling that captures combined-cycle plants’ flexibility, is being conducted in conjunction with improving gas market-clearing logic. SPP anticipates market participants will be able to begin gas-day testing in August and ECC testing in December.

The testing will involve more than a dozen systems or interfaces, four different vendors and seven SPP departments. At least two other system revisions will be released in addition to the ECC/gas-day releases.

Staff told SPP’s Change Working Group — which is responsible for implementing changes affecting markets and members — said it would deliver quarterly releases of the markets systems through 2016, making incremental improvements to the ECC functionality. One project manager said the team will have to see how downstream systems are affected as it gathers upstream system requirements.

Adding to the project’s complexity is the market-clearing engine, or, as SPP’s Jim Gonzalez said, “The actual calculator.” The ECC logic is so complex, Gonzalez said, the clearing engine has to run 20 times to produce a good solution.

– Tom Kleckner