The NEPOOL Markets Committee last week signed off on changes to the Inventoried Energy Program that are intended to get the winter reliability program back in line with global energy markets.

If approved by the full Participants Committee at its next meeting, the changes will incorporate an indexed forward rate to automatically adjust to changes in gas market prices ahead of next winter.

The tariff changes also alter the program’s gas contracting eligibility provisions, an effort to help increase the amount of inventoried energy brought to the region for the next few winters.

In approving the changes, the committee also rejected an amendment from Generation Bridge, which owns four natural gas units in Connecticut. The company wanted ISO-NE to change the maximum amount of stored fuel to be counted in the program from 72 hours to 120 hours.

Changing to 120 hours, Generation Bridge argued, would increase incentives to fill large tanks or arrange for more LNG in preparation for extended cold snaps. And it would improve the likelihood that units with oil capability but no capacity supply obligation would be available in the coming winters, the company said.

The committee, however, ultimately rejected that proposal.

Drilling down on DAS

The MC also continued to discuss ISO-NE’s proposed framework for a day-ahead ancillary services (DAS) market, diving into eligibility for the “flexible response services” (FRS) and energy imbalance reserves (EIRs) that will make up the core of the market.

Energy sources eligible for FRS will have to be dispatchable and located physically within ISO-NE (so no imports or virtual resources would be eligible). They would have to be unconstrained by transmission, not part of first-contingency supply loss and sustainable for a minimum of an hour.

EIR resources would also have to be physical supply resources located within the bounds of ISO-NE and either committed in the energy market already or a fast-start resource.

The committee also discussed settlement rules for the DAS market, which would be “largely unchanged from those proposed during Energy Security Improvements discussions in 2019-2020.”