The IESO is continually striving to increase competition to drive more efficient outcomes and improve system reliability. Through various forums, stakeholders have indicated their interest in providing greater competition to the IESO-administered markets to enable new revenue streams.
As the supply mix continues to evolve, the IESO has a need for a greater quantity and diversity of resources that can provide Operating Reserve (OR) to maintain reliability of the system at least cost to ratepayers. OR is standby supply that the IESO can quickly call upon in the event of an unexpected mismatch between generation and consumption and is co-optimized with energy, requiring resources to be enabled to participate in both energy and OR.
In order to explore potential market development options to enable further resource participation in the OR and energy markets, the IESO launched the Expanding Participation in Operating Reserve and Energy (EPOR-E) as an initiative within the IESO’s Market Development Advisory Group (MDAG). In 2019 the EPOR-E initiative was identified as a priority initiative for the 2020 MDAG work plan. On April 2, as part of an MDAG webinar, the IESO presented the scope of work and first phase of this project, detailing the IESO requirements for participation in the energy and OR markets. Due to the detailed nature of this initiative and its high priority as identified by stakeholders, the IESO is launching a broader stakeholder engagement separate from the MDAG. More details on the interaction between this stakeholder engagement, MDAG and other ongoing IESO stakeholder engagements is described in the approach section below.
Additional details on the IESO’s plans to engage stakeholders throughout the process can be found in the engagement plan. All comments and enquiries on this engagement can be directed to engagement@ieso.ca.
