VALLEY FORGE, Pa. — The Market Implementation Committee discussed two proposals that would delay the disclosure of financial transaction right ownership following an auction.

The effort to mask FTR ownership has been championed by DC Energy’s Bruce Bleiweis, who contends that FTR owners should be afforded the same confidentiality as PJM’s other market participants. Faced with significant opposition, led by Independent Market Monitor Joe Bowring, Bleiweis has amended his proposal over the past few months. (See “Compromise Offered on Masking FTR Ownership” in PJM Market Implementation Committee Briefs.)

The package he presented last week would allow PJM to post aggregate data following an auction, masked ownership data three to six months later and full disclosure after one year.

“This is a significant evolution from where we started,” he said. “What we’re headed toward is no commercial information available while an auction is ongoing.”

Jeff Whitehead of Direct Energy suggested Bleiweis consider releasing masked information on auction close. “I’m not saying it gets me to ‘yes,’ but it gets me closer,” he said.

The second package, presented by PJM, is similar but would remove the tiered release of information to make it consistent with how the RTO releases other data, said PJM’s Tim Horger.

After posting aggregate data at the close of an auction, PJM would disclose the full ownership information four months later.

“We’re kind of indifferent to any changes associated with this,” he said. “We’re fine with the status quo. If membership wants change, that’s OK too.”

The packages will be brought back for a first read next month.

Market Data Confidentiality Rule Change Gets First Reading

The issue of market data confidentiality returned to the committee after one item regarding individual generation outages was tweaked since last month.

A spirited discussion over what and when PJM may disclose publicly has been going on since a problem statement was presented in June. (See PJM Considering Release of Uplift, Outage Data.)

Current rules prohibit PJM from talking about certain information even after it’s been disclosed publicly, such as the nuclear plant outages posted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s website. They also limit the data PJM may share with stakeholders about conditions surrounding certain weather events, closed loop interfaces and transmission planning.

Stakeholders have debated for months over how to provide PJM the ability to discuss situations such as generator outages while at the same time not jeopardizing a member’s competitive standing in the market.

The current rule allows PJM to release aggregated data of more than three market participants and requires that information released involve a geographic area no smaller than a transmission zone.

PJM is proposing six exceptions that would allow PJM to the release or discuss:

• Information on individual generation outages involving an unusual operating condition on the transmission system such as a severe weather event;
• The amount of demand response in an area no smaller than three ZIP codes (specific offers or suppliers would remain confidential);
• The total amount of capacity offered and cleared, aggregated by transmission zone;
• Uplift payments in an area no smaller than a transmission zone, and for no shorter a time period than one operating day;
• Aggregated statistics related to the results of the three pivotal supplier test; and
• Data made public by a PJM member or a state or federal regulator.

“The intent here is not to be doing a monthly posting of widespread data,” said PJM’s Tom Zadlo. “It’s just the ability to answer questions from stakeholders.”

Operating Parameter Terms to be Defined

Members approved an issue charge to define terms related to operating parameters and move them from the eMKT/Gateway User’s Guide to PJM manuals. There was one abstention.

The 12 terms, including soak time, start-up time and minimum run time, also will be the focus of a special MIC session set for 1 to 4 p.m. on Jan. 19.

The committee is fast-tracking the issue in hopes of having the changes in place for the June 1 implementation of Capacity Performance.

— Suzanne Herel