SPP Markets+ stakeholders have unanimously approved the first version of the day-ahead market’s protocols, providing a framework for market design, operations and settlements as its future participants build its systems and processes.
The grid operator said the protocols will provide additional guidance on how market rules are applied by translating policy requirements into operational procedures as stakeholders construct and implement Markets+ in its second phase.
“A big milestone for this group to be able to get that approved,” Arizona Public Service’s Kent Walter said during a Dec. 18 virtual meeting of the Markets+ Participant Executive Committee (MPEC). The committee’s vice chair, Walter led the meeting in Chair Laura Trolese’s absence.
MPEC and its working groups and task forces are well into the $150 million implementation effort to add a bundle of services that will centralize day-ahead and real-time unit commitment and dispatch. Markets+ offers Western entities an alternative to CAISO’s Extended Day-Ahead Market as the two grid operators develop regional markets where none existed before.
“What we’re contemplating here is a huge improvement over the status quo, but I’m hopeful that someday, we’ll get to the more optimal use of the transmission system,” Western Power Trading Forum Executive Director Scott Miller said. “I appreciate what SPP is doing. We believe that this is going to go relatively smoothly. … But for a lot of people, this is one of those areas where it’s like, ‘We’re going to watch to see how this operates.’”
Two working groups brought the draft protocols forward. The Markets+ Resource Advocacy Task Force incorporated four outstanding parking lot items into the protocols, including adjustments to the appropriate must-offer calculation for storage resources that are self-committed to charge.
The task force will spend 2026 working on two more parking lot items and addressing any new developments that emerge from the Western Power Pool’s Western Resource Adequacy Program. (See WRAP Wins Commitments from 16 Entities.)
The Markets+ Design Working Group (MDWG) added market transfer, balancing authority area constraints and violation relaxation limits to the protocols. They would optimize market flows between BAs, using an e-tag framework for source and sink that defines the system limits in optimizing each interval.
The work represents an “early alignment” between the MDWG and SPP staff ahead of the broader design buildout, said Xcel Energy’s Nick Detmer.
Jim Gonzalez, SPP’s senior director of seams and Western services, said the interface portion of the protocols gets into “some of the deep nuts and bolts of the technical implementation” of the approved tariff.
“Version 1 of the protocols generally covers all the business practices of the approved tariff language from [January 2025] … where we really need that starting point to fully appreciate as we move in through this implementation effort,” he said. “A lot of the structure is correct. It’s in place. It’s really not going to change what we’re talking about as all the extra work is really fine-tuning.”
The protocols now go to the Interim Markets+ Independent Panel, composed of three SPP board members, for its consideration Jan. 6.
