On December 10, 2012, FERC approved amendments to the California Independent System Operator Corporation (“CAISO”) tariff that are designed to improve overall market efficiency by allowing for the dissemination of certain market data to market participants This release of information by CAISO is intended to enhance participation in CAISO’s energy, ancillary services, and congestion rights markets.
The tariff revisions constitute the third and final phase of a tiered plan created by CAISO to help its market participants better understand market results and outcomes, which in turn, CAISO believes, will enable them to more effectively engage in the CAISO markets.
With the approval of these tariff revisions, going forward CAISO intends to release:
- Actual, instead of default, transmission limits;
- Actual , instead of typical, load distribution factors;
- Shift factors to illustrate impacts on transmission constraint;
- Bid data from the congestion revenue rights market;
- Aggregate information on generation outages; and
- Aggregate information on wind and solar forecasting data.
As some of the information CAISO will be making available may likely contain critical energy infrastructure information, CAISO will be protecting sensitive information by releasing it only to parties who have executed the CAISO non-disclosure agreement and are either (1) market participants or (2) have a legitimate business or governmental interest in the CAISO market, and have satisfied certain other requirements. The accepted tariff changes also included a new provision that gives CAISO the authority to suspend the release of market data in the event CAISO determines that the result of the market data would cause anti-competitive or detrimental impacts to market efficiency.
The tariff changes became effective December 11, 2012. A copy of the FERC Order is available here.