Sector Meetings Postponed to April

In-person stakeholder meetings will resume March 1 at the earliest, and annual sectoral meetings have been pushed back a month to mid-April to allow them to proceed in person as much as possible, NYISO CEO Rich Dewey told the Management Committee on Wednesday.

“We continue to look at infection rates related to the pandemic, and we’re starting to see some declines that we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to get back in person on March 1,” Dewey said.

The sector meetings are an “exceedingly valuable” opportunity to meet with each of the individual sectors, he said, and they constitute the practical kickoff of the ISO’s strategic planning process. The meetings give staff a chance to meet directly with stakeholders according to their line of business or sector for open conversation about what the ISO’s priorities should be, he said.

“Those meetings are far more effective if we can do them in person, so in order to try to maximize or increase the potential that we can actually hold those meetings in person, we’re going to push them back to the early and mid-April time frame,” Dewey said.

Cold Weather Ops Going Fine

Since the second week of January, New York has experienced colder than average weather conditions — but not extreme cold — and the peak so far came in above 23,000 MW, about 97% of the ISO’s forecasted peak winter load, COO Rick Gonzales said.

Natural gas prices during January have been significantly elevated and have ranged from $15 to $25/MMBtu, reaching as high as $35/MMBtu for some of the eastern New York gas hubs, he said.

“That has translated into significantly higher energy clearing prices in eastern New York and even throughout the state. … You might be aware we’ve often seen $200/MWh energy prices and higher throughout eastern New York,” Gonzales said.

New York and New England usually have slightly higher energy prices than neighbors Ontario, Quebec and PJM, he said.

“Quebec is actually almost not an importer to New York during these colder weather periods, but we are actually exporting to Quebec,” Gonzales said. “And Ontario and PJM power transfers are typically into New York, so the market systems are doing what we would expect, but … we are seeing the ties being fully utilized in almost all directions.”

NYISO is continuing to allow certain transmission work to proceed, except for on very cold days, he said.