Market Operations - Functions for Power System Operations

Overview of Market Operations Functions

As the electricity industry is deregulated, and as FERC defines more clearly what the market operation tariffs will encompass, three possible Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) in the Western Interconnection are developing seamless interfaces for Market Participants to submit energy schedules and ancillary service bids across these 3 RTOs. The 3 RTOs are California ISO (existing ISO handling the electricity market in California), RTO West (potential RTO of many northwestern utilities), and WestConnect (potential RTO of many southwestern utilities). These 3 RTOs are developing the requirements for the Western RTO functions.

The descriptions of the functions below may or may not represent the final market rules and market operations, because these have not been finalized yet.

The following is a list of Western RTO functions related to market operations, organized for convenience by timeline. These functions have never been implemented as yet because the actual market rules have not been agreed upon and are waiting for some general FERC decisions and some FERC RTO-specific approvals. Nonetheless, the functions represent conceptually many of the key types of market operations that are need in any electricity market.

This document is an overview of the Western RTO functions and does not include any of the step by step details, which are provided in the detailed documents. Only the listed functions with asterisks are represented in the diagrams and/or step-by-step descriptions in those documents’ section 2.

a. Long Term Planning

· Transmission and Generation Maintenance Coordination

· Updating the Power System Model

b. Medium/Short Term Planning

· Load Forecast

· Outage Scheduling

· Congestion Management

· Long term Auction/sale of FTRs

c. Day Ahead Market

· Auction/sale of FTRs

· Day Ahead Submittal of Energy Schedules

· Day Ahead Submittal of Ancillary Service Bids