After seven months of operations under its Market Renewal Program, IESO is doing some housekeeping, implementing “non-substantive” changes that it said will “improve clarity” and “better align the market rules with the correct functioning” of the nodal market.

The changes, approved by the IESO Board of Directors on Oct. 24, are effective Dec. 3.

The Renewed Market, which launched May 1, created a financially binding day-ahead market (DAM) and about 1,000 generation, load and intertie pricing nodes to replace its provincewide price. (See Ontario Nodal Market Nearing ‘Steady State’ After Nearly 4 Months.)

Some of the changes remove transitory provisions that allowed both the Renewed Market rules and the legacy market rules to be in effect concurrently. “They do not reflect changes in design principles and are limited to typographical, cleanup, clarifications or computational corrections,” IESO said.

In addition to general cleanup items, the changes affect sections on settlements, market power mitigation, and market and system operations.

Market Power Mitigation

The changes (MR-00484-R00) reduce the default value for maximum starts per day from 10,000 to one; remove the “unnecessary administrative burden” on market participants to disclose affiliated entities that have limited or no ability to control or influence a market participant; and codify IESO’s obligation to publish potential constrained areas.

Market and System Operations

The changes to Chapter 7 of the market rules (MR-00484-R01):

• • prohibit generator offer guarantee-eligible resources from increasing offer prices for energy and operating reserves (OR) during the first 30 minutes of a dispatch hour of the real-time market unrestricted window;
  • require market participants to revise single-cycle mode status to align with the requirements and duration of commitments that span across midnight; and
  • add a limit for electricity storage resources offering OR in the opposite direction of OR supply during the subsequent dispatch hour in the energy market. The limit was inadvertently omitted.

Settlements

Settlement provisions of the market rules were revised (MR-00484-R02) to:

• • amend the hourly operating reserve settlement amount by dividing the quantities by 12;
  • clarify the eligibility for the DAM balancing credit based on day-ahead schedules;
  • delete the offer/bid substitution for DAM make-whole payments (MWPs), which is not applicable;
  • modify the language of the DAM MWP ineligibility for called capacity exports with the same language in the real-time MWP provisions;
  • insert the “dispatchable load” resource type within a provision for the real-time MWP reversal charge;
  • amend the formula for the hourly uplift settlement amount to add a missing variable; and
  • amend the formula for the DAM reliability scheduling uplift by inserting brackets to clarify the summation function.

Miscellaneous Cleanup Items

MR-00484-R03 deletes the obligation for IESO to review the capacity prudential requirements at least once every three years.

MR-00484-R04 corrects typographical and grammatical errors, adds cross-references and italicizes defined terms.

MR-00484-R05 removes transitory provisions to reflect the switch from the legacy market to the Renewed Market, including:

• • “Section A” rules at the beginning of each chapter, which allowed both the renewed market rules and the legacy market rules to be in effect concurrently;
  • sections A.1 and B.1.1 in each chapter of the market rules (where applicable); and
  • the defined term “market transition error,” which is no longer required.

It also modified the definitions of the terms “market transition,” “market transition completion” and “Renewed Market rules.”