ISO-NE Seeks To Tweak Winter Reliability Program After Failed Bidding
August 09, 2013
ISO-New England will have to tweak its winter reliability program after initial bidding failed to procure the needed capacity, it told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The program is designed to ensure the ISO has enough capacity to meet demand this winter, largely through a combination of oil-fired generation and demand response to avoid any outages from insufficient natural gas supplies at peak heating times. The ISO wanted to get commitments to provide 2.4 million MWhs of DR and oil-fired and dual-fueled generation, but at the end of the bidding window it had received just 1.415 million at a cost of $60.66 million. Stakeholders may have bid conservatively due to apprehension of penalties and regulatory timing, the ISO said. As a result, the ISO is looking at changes to the program to cut risk and the corresponding premiums in bids in order to encourage more offers. A filing tweaking the program could come by the end of this week, and the ISO said it will ask FERC for an expedited order on the revised rules and any new bids to calm concerns about timing.