By Tom Kleckner

SPP stakeholders last week unanimously approved the initial set of protocols that will guide the RTO’s Western Energy Imbalance Service (WEIS) market in the Western Interconnection.

The Western Markets Executive Committee, meeting by phone on Friday, also formally disbanded the WEIS Protocol Review Task Force, which drafted the protocols. It will be replaced by the Western Markets Working Group, which has scheduled its first meeting for April 29. (See SPP Launches Western Market Groups.)

“I think [the protocols] are in a really good spot,” said SPP’s Gary Cate, who worked on the task force. “We know of some sections that need cleanup … but this is a living document. There are things in here that both the SPP team and the protocol team thought this is how the market should work. If we’re going to find it doesn’t work or what we thought is clear is not clear, we’ll clean those up or add new sections.”

The protocols’ settlements section and some formulas need to be revised, Cate said. Connectivity testing, market trials and parallel operations will likely highlight other revisions that need to be made, using a revision request process modeled on SPP’s.

To emphasize the point, David Kelley, SPP’s director of seams and market design, noted that the grid operator’s Integrated Marketplace protocols are currently in version 75.

“That gives you a flavor of how dynamic the protocols are,” Kelley told the committee. “You guys have the ownership of these protocols and this doc. It’ll change as often as you guys approve it to be changed.”

When it came time to vote, Chair Tim Vigil, with the Western Area Power Administration’s Colorado River Storage Project, asked whether committee members had any questions. He was greeted by dead silence, a sign of the impending vote.

The task force approved the protocols without opposition. Each of the companies on the committee also had a representative on the task force.

The WEIS market is scheduled to go live next February. SPP will centrally dispatch energy from the participants every five minutes to provide price transparency and bilateral trades.

The market, modeled on SPP’s Energy Imbalance Market that operated from 2007 to 2014, has attracted eight participants. (See SPP Board OKs $9.5M to Build Western EIS Market.)