ORIGINAL REPORTING: Western States Power Market Design Emerges

CAISO Regional Market Design Details Emerge, Big Questions Remain

Herman Trabish, December 13, 2021 (California Current)

Editor’s note: CAISO’s committed effort to build this market continues at a deliberate pace.

The newly reinitiated stakeholder process to build a Western Day-Ahead Market took two steps forward that shows the California Independent System Operator’s ongoing commitment to the process. Stakeholders continued engagement also demonstrates progress.

On Dec. 3, following a forum and foundational workshop, CAISO responded to stakeholders’ calls for more detail and committed to creating working groups to resolve the thorny problem of potential market manipulation. The first effort to create a day-ahead market power was launched before the pandemic but then halted.

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Seeing the success of CAISO’s voluntary real-time Energy Imbalance Market power providers are working toward a much bigger and more challenging ambition. While the real-time market handles less than 10% of the West’s daily energy transactions, the proposed Extended Day-Ahead Market could handle over 90% of them.

A glaring absence in CAISO’s recent responses is how it will resolve the hard questions about governance in an Extended Day-Ahead Market, which dominated stakeholder concerns during an October forum. The outline of the principles presented at the forum included those vital to a regional day-ahead market’s function, like clarity on generation and transmission commitments and compensation.

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The principles were developed collaboratively by the investor-owned utilities and public power agency EDAM stakeholders, showing significant alignment between potential EDAM participants, said CAISO SVP and COO Mark Rothleder.

Recent governance reform that shares authority between CAISO and the EIM demonstrates California is ready to share EDAM governance with other states, said Southern California Edison President and CEO Kevin Payne during the forum. EDAM’s governance is “critical,” CAISO acknowledged. The principles “largely align” with the shared authority model and “is a good model to consider for EDAM,” it added… click here for more

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