Market Renewal - Enhanced Real-Time Unit Commitment

The IESO is working with stakeholders to design and develop an Enhanced Real-Time Unit Commitment (ERUC) program. An Enhanced Real-Time Unit Commitment Program will improve the efficiency of unit commitments in the intra-day timeframe by taking into account all resource costs in commitment decisions. An ERUC will also improve commitment decisions overall by optimizing over multiple hours rather than solving for each hour independently.

Background

The Real-Time Generator Cost Guarantee (RT-GCG) program ensures that generators with long start-up times are available to meet reliability, if needed, in real-time. It has evolved over the years in terms of its eligibility criteria and the cost recovery framework and methodology. However, there remain a number of systemic issues with the design of the current program.

Inefficiency: Resources under the program are committed solely on the basis of their energy offers; start-up, speed no load and other costs are not included in this calculation and are recovered under the pre-approved cost recovery framework.

Lack of Competition: The lack of consideration of start-up costs means generators in the program do not have to compete on those costs to get a commitment.

Misalignment with Day-Ahead: The day-ahead and intra-day commitment programs use different optimization both in terms of the inputs considered and the optimization timeframe (day-ahead commitments are based on three-part offers and 24 hour optimization where RT-GCG commitments are based on energy offers only and each hour is optimized independently).

Administration and Oversight: Historically, cost submissions have been subject to review and audit creating a high administrative burden for both the IESO and market participants.

The design of the RT-GCG program has also been criticized in several Market Surveillance Panel reports due to its inefficiency, cost and lack of transparency.

Under Market Renewal the current commitment program will be enhanced to one that facilitates greater competition and more efficiently commits resources anticipated to be needed for reliability in real-time. This will be achieved by:

Allowing participants to competitively submit offers reflecting incremental energy, start-up and speed-no-load costs respectively

Including all costs associated with offers in the IESO’s optimization tools
Making commitment decisions based on the total efficiency of all hours across the commitment period

Enhanced Real-Time Unit Commitment, together with a Day-Ahead Market and a Single Schedule Market collectively will improve the dispatch, commitment and pricing of resources in the energy market.

Get involved

This initiative will re-envision how stakeholders participate and are committed in the intra-day timeframe and will therefore be of interest to all IESO market participants.

Interested parties are invited to participate in, and provide feedback on, any of the Market Renewal initiatives.

For more information about how to become involved or to provide comments on this initiative, please contact engagement@ieso.ca.

Stakeholder Engagement Plan

Enhanced Real-Time Unit Commitment High-Level Design (full document)

Executive Summary

Backgrounder

ERUC Design Tracker
Issues & Actions Log

Schedule of Activities

Date Agenda	Activities	Expected Actions
February 28, 2019	Deadline for Feedback on ERUC HLD ERUC HLD Feedback Form
February 7, 2019	Q&A Session Communication
December 20, 2018	Release of draft ERUC High-Level Design
December 15, 2018	Stakeholder Feedback Ontario Power Generation Ontario Waterpower Association
November 22, 2018	Engagement Plan: Detailed Design, MRP Energy stream (updated January 11, 2019) Communication
November 22, 2018	Deadline for feedback on SSM HLD Communication
October 18, 2018	Market Renewal Education and Awareness Sessions for targeted audiences
October 18, 2018	Stakeholder feedback on materials and issues discussed at the September 20th meeting AMPCO Market Surveillance Panel Ontario Power Generation IESO Response to Stakeholder Feedback
September 20, 2018 Agenda	Stakeholder Meeting Communication Presentation Congestion Rents and Loss Residual Zonal Disbursement Methodology Intertie Congestion Pricing Review of Market Power Mitigation Decisions and Guidelines Introduction to the High Level Design Review Process Day Ahead Market Detailed Design Phase
August 16, 2018	Stakeholder Feedback on materials and issues discussed at the July 18th and 19th meetings Nalcor Energy Ontario Power Generation Workbench IESO Response to Stakeholder Feedback
July 18-19, 2018 Agenda Minutes	Stakeholder Meeting Communication Presentation Market Power Mitigation Design Considerations Optimization of Energy Limited Resources Combined Cycle Plant Modelling Settlement Topics
June 21, 2018	Stakeholder feedback on materials and issues discussed at the May 23rd and 24th meetings ADG Group AMPCO APPrO – ERUC APPrO – MPM Consortium of Renewable Generators and Storage Providers DER AC HQ Energy Marketing MAG Energy - DAM MAG Energy – ERUC MAG Energy - SSM Ontario Power Generation IESO Response to Stakeholder Feedback
June 7, 2018	Webinar Invitation: MRP Energy Workstream - Intertie Transactions - Stakeholder Discussion Communication Stakeholder Feedback HQ Energy Marketing MAG Energy Ontario Power Generation
May 23-24, 2018 Agenda Minutes	Stakeholder Meeting Intertie Transactions Presentation Market Power Mitigation Design Considerations Two Settlement and Make-Whole Design Scenarios
April 27, 2018	Stakeholder feedback on materials and issues discussed at March 29 meeting APPrO APPrO (received May 11, 2018) Capital Power MAG Energy Solutions Ontario Power Generation IESO Response to Stakeholder Feedback
March 29, 2018 ERUC Minutes MPMI Minutes	Stakeholder Meeting Presentation Market Power Mitigation Design Considerations
February 15, 2018	Stakeholder Feedback APPrO Emera Energy Ontario Power Generation Nalcor Energy Northland Power TransAlta Workbench Corp. IESO Response to Stakeholder Feedback
January 31, 2018 Agenda Minutes	Stakeholder Meeting Presentation
December 7, 2017	Stakeholder Feedback Powerful Solutions IESO Response to Stakeholder Feedback
November 27, 2017 Agenda	Stakeholder Meeting – Design Elements Fundamentals Presentation	Materials posted one week in advance of meeting Recorded Presentation
October 30, 2017 Agenda	Stakeholder Meeting – Design Elements Fundamentals Design Element Fundamentals 1	Recorded Presentation
October 11, 2017 Agenda	Stakeholder Meeting - Introduction to Engagement, High Level Overview of Design Elements and Scope Introduction to Enhanced Real-time Unit Commitment (ERUC) ERUC: Overview and Design Elements	Recorded Presentation
September 28, 2017	Announce Engagement and Post Draft Stakeholder Engagement Plan Communication