CARMEL, Ind. — MISO will make two changes to improve its year-old emergency pricing structure by this summer in addition to the two emergency pricing floors rolled out last year, RTO staff said during a March 9 Market Subcommittee meeting.
The first change: Commitment costs of offline fast-start units will be allocated into the minimum runtime when calculating the offer floor for emergency prices.
The second: Emergency-committed units dispatched at their economic minimum prices will be allowed to set those emergency prices.
The two changes were the only selected among the five proposed by MISO staff after a July 2016 emergency event resulted in depressed prices. (See “MISO May Tweak Emergency Pricing Floors,” MISO Market Subcommittee Briefs.)
MISO engineer Oluwaseyi Akinbode said the modifications are meant to produce more efficient prices.
“If you believe what the planners are saying, there’s a chance we will get into these emergency conditions this summer, and we want to be prepared for that,” Akinbode said.
New User Group Aims to Improve Ease-of-Use in MISO Apps
MISO will later this month debut a new Application User Group for people who use the RTO’s technology.
April Peterson, a representative from MISO’s asset registration team, said the group will focus on improvements and common challenges market participants face when using the RTO’s computer market applications. She said attendance is also open to MISO software vendors and IT specialists that are contracted to make software changes.
Peterson said MISO aims to hold conference calls monthly, with the first call scheduled for March 23.
Potential Cost Recovery Gap in Manual Redispatch
Day-ahead resources can see gaps in cost recovery when they are manually redispatched offline — and a Tariff change could remedy the problem, MISO staff said.
When the RTO decommits a day-ahead resource, the day-ahead margin assurance payment does not take into account the resource’s minimum down times or start-up costs for reimbursement, said Jason Howard, MISO market quality manager.
Howard said yet-to-be-written Tariff language could “close the gap.”
“The manual redispatch might only last four hours, but a minimum down time for a resource might be seven hours,” Howard explained. “Our current day-ahead margin assurance payment does not account for these situations.”
Proposed Tariff language will be presented at a future Market Subcommittee meeting.
— Amanda Durish Cook
