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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