Market Surveillance Committee

The Market Surveillance Committee is an independent body of highly skilled industry experts that provides comments, critiques and recommendations about the ISO market monitoring process (as described in the tariff) and a variety of market issues to the ISO Chief Executive Officer and Board of Governors. In addition, the Committee is required under the ISO tariff to review and comment on Department of Market Monitoring analyses and reports.

Committee description

The Market Surveillance Committee is an independent advisory group of industry experts. To ensure independence, none of its members are affiliated with or have any financial interest in any market participant. Their charter allows them to suggest changes in rules and protocols or recommend sanctions or penalties directly to the ISO Governing Board.

They possess wide and varied expertise in areas vital to the understanding of competitive markets. Individually, they are experienced in economics with emphasis on antitrust, competition and market power. They are familiar with generation and transmission operations, legal issues in regulated operations, and gaming behavior in energy and other commodity markets.

Public notice is provided in advance of Market Surveillance Committee meetings. Because of the confidential nature of the information they discuss, the meetings may occasionally be closed to the public. The Committee will periodically produce written reports containing their recommendations and submit them to the ISO CEO and Governing Board. Such reports will be made available to the public subject to restrictions on confidential information.

The functions of the Market Surveillance Committee include:

• Provide independent review of market performance and market power problems
• Develop a record of structural problems and propose corrective action
• Review rule changes, penalties, and sanctions

Members

James Bushnell - email: jbbushnell@ucdavis.edu
Scott Harvey - email: scott.harvey@fticonsulting.com
Benjamin Hobbs, Chair - email: bhobbs@jhu.edu

Contacting the committee

If you need to contact the Market Surveillance Committee, please use any of the following methods:
Phone: (916) 351-4400
Fax: (916) 608-7296
E-mail: msc@caiso.com