NOTICE DATE: July 22,
2009
NOTICE TYPE: M-D072209-01
Legal Notification
SHORT DESCRIPTION: Quick
start resource intervals missed July 15 through July 18, 2009
INTENDED AUDIENCE: Market
Participants
DAYS AFFECTED: July 15
through July 18, 2009
LONG DESCRIPTION: After
an EMS (Energy Management System) database load on July 15, 2009, a manual
process associated with the load was not completed. This resulted in several
offline quick start resources not being recognized by the EMS as available to
the Balancing Energy Market, which impacted a number of intervals from the time
of the database load through July 18, 2009. The issue arose in the context of a
manual process that allows the Balancing Energy Market to include offline quick
start units as deployable for balancing energy. Absent changes to the EMS
system, this manual process is necessary to achieve this functionality.
Presently, when SFT (Simultaneous Feasibility Test) runs, it
picks up the real-time topology data and adjusts the resource plan status to
match the real-time breaker status. To prevent the removal of offline quick
start resources from the balancing bid stack, ERCOT implemented a manual
process in conjunction with the 2007 release of the SFT which is performed as
part of each database load. This process sets a flag in SFT to ignore real-time
breaker status for offline quick start units allowing them to be considered
available for balancing energy. To be eligible for selection in this manual
process, QSEs (Qualified Scheduling Entities) with resources capable of
starting and loading must demonstrate this capability to ERCOT. Then, to
identify these resources in the manual process, they must be represented in the
resource plan with a status of “online, available and zero scheduled
output”. ERCOT then selects relevant units pursuant to the manual
workaround of EMS described above.
During an EMS database load on July 15, 2009, the manual
process described above was not conducted. This inadvertent oversight affected
several intervals from July 15 through July 18, 2009.
ERCOT investigated the cause and concluded that the manual
process described above was missed due to human error. As a result of this
incident, ERCOT will take the following corrective action to ensure this event
does not happen again.
1.
An
explicit requirement has been added to the EMS Database Load Procedure to
verify successful setting of the quick start flags.
2.
The
setting of the quick start flags will become an automated process by August 12,
2009.
3.
ERCOT
is revising its procedures to ensure that after each database load, ERCOT staff
will verify that the process did result in the correct data being loaded into
the system.
CONTACT: If you have any
questions, please contact your ERCOT Account Manager. You may also call the
general ERCOT Client Services phone number at (512) 248-3900 or contact ERCOT
Client Services via e-mail at [log in to unmask].
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are receiving e-mail from an ERCOT distribution list that you no longer wish to
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dh