Launch of CAISO’s Energy Imbalance Market Marks a Smooth transition for EnSuite and PG&E.

CAISO’s semiannual release schedule has seen two exceptionally busy schedules, with the spring release of the FERC 764 market revisions, and the fall release of CAISO’s new Energy Imbalance Market (EIM). Each release has brought major revisions to the structure of CAISO energy settlements, including the fifteen-minute market charges mandated by FERC 764 and a large group of new and modified charge codes with the inception of EIM. The release of the EIM market changes represents the second major market update that Northern California utility PG&E has managed since installing EnSuite Settlements.

In each case, EnSuite Settlements managed the change with aplomb. “EnSuite is designed from the ground up to manage this type of market change.” said EnDimensions CTO Elene Radinskaia, “In both the fall and spring releases, the changes to charge validation and shadow calculations were handled without compiling a single line of code. This allows for a clean and trouble-free transition for our customers, without disrupting system availability or the customer’s daily business process. In most cases, updates can be installed transparently to the user, and without shutting down the system.”

COO Ryan Heidari noted, “As we progress with our partners at PG&E, each market update cycle reinforces our confidence that the fundamentals of the EnSuite Settlements design are solid; Our aim with EnSuite is to provide a robust, full featured product suite that reduces long-term cost of ownership and supports our commitment to innovation and refinement that continually adds value to the product. Leveraging its modular design, we can now also offer an EnSuite product targeted toward EIM market participants who do not require the full scope of ISO settlements.”

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The EIM will launch the most significant geographical expansion of the Western energy markets

The California ISO’s Energy Imbalance Market is Closer Than You Think!

With the CAISO FERC 764 market changes now in the rearview mirror, we can all draw a deep breath and look forward to the next big thing: the CAISO Energy Imbalance Market, aka the EIM. The EIM will launch the most significant geographical expansion of the Western energy markets since the launch of CAISO back in ’97.

Cal ISO looks to gain a more flexible portfolio of real time energy resources to augment the increasingly diverse, and increasingly renewable, resources within the state. External entities such as inaugural EIM participant PacifiCorp hope to gain added flexibility as well, including the ability to buy and sell energy in the real time energy markets and across area boundaries in a much more dynamic manner than in the past. The idea is that by increasing the overall fleet of available resources to (ideally) include much of the Western Interconnect, regional variations in load and generation will tend to cancel out across the area, keeping prices down and enhancing reliability. Many of the stakeholders will be watching this market launch very closely.

At EnDimensions, we have been tracking the evolution of the market structures and tariff provisions very closely. Having met the challenges of the FERC 764 changes with timely revisions to our EnSuite settlement and analytic products, we are now tooling up for a smooth transition to EIM! The EIM market will bring new requirements for scheduling and settlements, including new charges and changes to existing charges that our shadow settlement and analytics modules will respond to with aplomb. In addition, new EIM participants will find that the EnSuite Settlements products, together with expertise of our market experts, will provide for a clean and easy transition for those wishing to enter the market.

Modularity and Configurability Make for a Smooth FERC 764 Transition

As the driving force behind more than 40% of the energy transacted in the California ISO Markets, it was critical to PG&E to maintain the continuity and availability of their settlement and market analytic software through the transition to the FERC-Mandated Fifteen Minute market, or FMM. Fortunately, EnSuite by EnDimensions was built from the ground up with just such customers in mind.  EnSuite’s modular, configuration-driven design meant that the transition from 10-minute to 5-minute settlement intervals, the launch of six new charge codes and the revamp of CAISO’s market APIs was handled smoothly and without a major code redesign.

The transition was completed without a service outage and with minimal disruption to normal business processes. Shadow calculations for the new charge codes were implemented with an updated configuration pack, which implemented shadow calculations for the new charge codes and reconfigured the settlement interval from ten to five minutes.  APIs were updated similarly, with interfaces and data templates modified without a service interruption, while preserving backward compatibility for legacy data.

With the close of the FERC 764 upgrades, we now look forward to another smooth upgrade path in support of the Energy Imbalance Market (EIM), slated to launch in Fall of 2014. By planning and building for availability, flexibility and configurability, EnDimensions has created a product suite that handles 21st century energy markets in stride!