MISO reported it’s making steady progress on installing a new market platform by the end of next year and will debut a new day-ahead market clearing engine this spring.
The RTO said it likely will begin using its new, day-ahead market clearing engine exclusively sometime in May.
At a March 27 customer readiness symposium meant to prepare members for MISO’s technological advances, MISO’s Arijit Bhowmik said the RTO is nearing the completion of parallel operations of the day-ahead clearing engine. MISO has said once it has its new clearing engine up and running smoothly, it can retire the legacy clearing engine from parallel operations.
The grid operator was forced to push back the launch of the day-ahead market clearing engine to early 2024 instead of late 2023 due to delays. (See “Market Platform Replacement to Spill over into 2025,” MISO Board Week Briefs: Dec. 6-8, 2022.)
MISO is slated to finish its market platform replacement completely by the end of 2025. It previously had ambitions to wrap up the project by the end of 2024, though it frequently cautioned the timeline could run longer. The RTO began the process of swapping out its outdated market platform for a new, modular platform in 2017.
In late 2025, MISO will replace its real-time market clearing engine, which the grid operator uses every five minutes to send dispatch instructions. It also will go live in early 2025 with a new look-ahead commitment tool for generators.
MISO completed factory acceptance testing and took delivery of its new real-time engine in 2023.
Bhowmik said he hopes the introduction of the more nimble, modular platform can allow MISO to scale back the support hours it spends with members on the vintage platform.
MISO has said it expects to spend $152 million on the market platform replacement, including about $14 million this year. It estimated program benefits remain steady at about $430 million. The grid operator began the market platform project with a $130 million budget and a $30 million contingency.
Last year, MISO Director Theresa Wise said though the project now is “at the edge of” MISO’s budget plus contingencies, MISO expects the new platform to save at least a few hundred million dollars.
