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.
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.
Schedule of Activities
Date |
Activities |
Expected Actions |
---|---|---|
February 28, 2019 |
Deadline for Feedback on ERUC HLD |
|
February 7, 2019 |
Q&A Session |
|
December 20, 2018 |
Release of draft ERUC High-Level Design |
|
December 15, 2018 |
Stakeholder Feedback |
|
November 22, 2018 |
Engagement Plan: Detailed Design, MRP Energy stream (updated January 11, 2019) |
|
November 22, 2018 |
Deadline for feedback on SSM HLD |
|
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 |
|
September 20, 2018 |
Stakeholder Meeting |
|
August 16, 2018
|
Stakeholder Feedback on materials and issues discussed at the July 18th and 19th meetings |
|
July 18-19, 2018 |
Stakeholder Meeting |
|
June 21, 2018 |
Stakeholder feedback on materials and issues discussed at the May 23rd and 24th meetings |
|
June 7, 2018 |
Webinar Invitation: MRP Energy Workstream - Intertie Transactions - Stakeholder Discussion Stakeholder Feedback |
|
May 23-24, 2018 |
Stakeholder Meeting |
|
April 27, 2018 |
Stakeholder feedback on materials and issues discussed at March 29 meeting
|
|
March 29, 2018 |
Stakeholder Meeting |
|
February 15, 2018 |
Stakeholder Feedback |
|
January 31, 2018 |
Stakeholder Meeting |
|
December 7, 2017 |
Stakeholder Feedback |
|
November 27, 2017 |
Stakeholder Meeting – Design Elements Fundamentals |
Materials posted one week in advance of meeting |
October 30, 2017 |
Stakeholder Meeting – Design Elements Fundamentals |
|
October 11, 2017 |
Stakeholder Meeting - Introduction to Engagement, High Level Overview of Design Elements and Scope |
|
September 28, 2017 |
Announce Engagement and Post Draft Stakeholder Engagement Plan |