Market Renewal Newsletter - February Update
February 8, 2021
From the desk of...
Darren Matsugu, Senior Manager, Market Design & Integration
January marked a significant achievement with the final final detailed design versions 2.0 being published. This was the culmination of a lot of hard work from stakeholders and our Market Renewal team.
In my role as Senior Manager, Market Design and Integration I’ve been a part of the journey throughout both the high-level and detailed design phases of the project.
I want to express our appreciation for the thoughtful and helpful feedback that we received throughout the detailed design process. We received very valuable insights from the in-person technical sessions, written feedback submitted and in the question/answer sessions, both before and during the pandemic. Ours and stakeholders' efforts have not wavered throughout the challenges brought on from the pandemic and we are grateful to have maintained the momentum to keep moving MRP forward.
This quality feedback made the design team think deliberately on all areas of the design. While we may not have agreed or were able to accommodate everything, it certainly made for better design documents.
We’ve built up a lot more detail since the high-level designs; I’m pleased with the progress we’ve made to move the project along and provide the renewed market with some real definition.
I look forward to seeing this hard work pay off when market goes live and eventually reconnecting again in-person in the future.
Darren
What we're working on
New Program Delivery Executive Appointed to lead the Market Renewal Program
The Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) is pleased to announce Jessica Savage will be leading the Market Renewal Program (MRP) as the newly appointed Program Delivery Executive. She comes to this position with over 15 years at the IESO in progressively senior roles in Operations, Market Rules and Corporate and Regulatory Affairs.
As one of the IESO’s key corporate priority initiatives, MRP is focused on improving how we supply, schedule and price electricity to meet Ontario’s future needs – once implemented, the program is expected to result in $800 million in net benefits in the first 10 years alone. Jessica joins MRP at an important time with the program transitioning from the detailed design into the implementation phase. The focus of the program going forward will be on translating the designs into rules, manuals, processes and tools, and continued engagement with stakeholders, to ready the IESO and the sector for Ontario’s renewed wholesale electricity markets.
Closing off detailed design
All final versions of the 14 detailed design documents are now available on the IESO website as well as the design change tracker (changes from v1.0 to v2.0).
We’ve also recently published the following detailed design response to feedback documents:
- IESO response to feedback (Day-Ahead Market Calculation Engine)
- IESO response to feedback (Real-Time Calculation Engine)
- IESO response to feedback (Pre-Dispatch Calculation Engine)
- IESO response to feedback, part #2 (Offers, Bids and Data Inputs, Grid and Market Operations Integration, Market Power Mitigation, Market Settlement)
- IESO response to feedback (Incremental)
Implementation phase update
We’ve posted the tracked changes and final materials as part of the Implementation Phase Market Entry and Prudential Security batch of Market Rules and Market Manuals and the IESO responses to stakeholder feedback.
Related IESO news
Latest Annual Planning Outlook
The IESO’s latest Annual Planning Outlook provides a long-term view of the demand, resource and transmission outlook, features a discussion of system reliability and sets out how competitive procurement mechanisms, distributed energy resources (DERs) and transmission upgrades can help Ontario meet reliability needs during the outlook period.
Fast Facts: 2020 Year in Review
Overall electricity demand patterns in all sectors in Ontario were impacted by COVID-19 in 2020, resulting in overall electricity use decreasing by 2.1 per cent. Total electricity use was 132.2 TWh, the second lowest since 1988. Ontario’s grid continued to operate reliably throughout the pandemic, thanks to close coordination with generators, transmitters, distributors and our North American counterparts. Get more fast facts about Ontario electricity system’s supply, demand, price, and energy-efficiency savings in the 2020 Year in Review.
Key dates
- February 23 – Stakeholder Engagement Day: Updates on the Implementation Phase Reference Levels and Quantities and the Replacement of the IESO’s Settlement System (RSS)
- March 22-24 – Stakeholder Engagement Days
- March 23 – Technical Panel Vote to Post: Implementation Phase Market Rules and Manuals Batch 1
Did you know?
What is a settlement floor price?
In the detailed design, the IESO proposed the introduction of a settlement floor price for locational prices. This element of pricing followed a technical session held in early 2020 to talk with stakeholders about the concept, and received input prior to building this concept into the detailed design.
The concept means that the IESO will not settle injections or withdrawals from the market at a price less than -$100/MWh. While market participants can continue to submit offers at prices as low as -$2000/MWh to manage their operations, locational market clearing prices would be limited by the floor price.
Read the full backgrounder on settlement floor pricing at at IESO.ca…