The System Market Power Mitigation (SMPM) initiative, as discussed during the Nov. 13, 2020 Market Surveillance Committee (MSC) meeting, will be not be presented to the California ISO Board of Governors and Western Energy Imbalance Market (EIM) Governing Body in December, as previously anticipated. At this time, the ISO has no further proposal iterations planned.

After careful consideration of stakeholder and MSC input, and in light of the August 2020 heat wave events, the ISO believes the SMPM initiative would be best implemented in concert with scarcity pricing measures. The ISO is developing a contingency plan that will allow it to bring the initiative forward in early 2021, in the event further analysis shows a strong need for the proposal prior to next summer, even without scarcity pricing measures. The Technology team will continue its efforts to maintain the feasibility of a potential summer 2021 implementation of the current proposal, in the event the ISO must seek Board approval early next year.

As a reminder, all related information for the System Market Power Mitigation initiative is available at https://stakeholdercenter.caiso.com/StakeholderInitiatives/System-market-power-mitigation.

The MSC materials discussing the system market power proposals can be found on the ISO’s webpage, at:

http://www.caiso.com/informed/Pages/BoardCommittees/Default.aspx.