After months of conversations with stakeholders, NYISO presented the Installed Capacity Working Group with its priorities for the Capacity Market Structure Review, with improving the demand curve reset (DCR) process and methodology topping the list.
Also on the list are winter reliability capacity enhancements; attribute-based pricing for transmission security; improving capacity accreditation and resource adequacy modeling; and redesigning the capacity zones.
Of the listed priorities, the winter reliability enhancements are ongoing as a standalone project. Brendan Long, capacity market design specialist for NYISO, said that they were occurring in parallel with the review.
Much of the morning of the all-day April 1 meeting was dominated by conversation about how NYISO would reexamine the DCR, the process by which it sets the proxy unit’s cost of new entry into the market, which in turn helps set capacity prices for the next four years. The ISO just completed the most recent reset last year.
“This effort would look to examine alternative methodologies and processes for establishing the ICAP demand curves with the goal of reducing the complexity and resource intensity of the DCR,” said Maddy Mohrman, senior market design specialist with NYISO.
Mohrman said this could include changing the demand curve shape and slope, using “empirical net cost of new entry” to set a reference price and leveraging existing publications of resource costs. But before she could proceed into detail on the ISO’s options, stakeholders immediately began asking for things to be included under the scope of the DCR review. A representative of the Long Island Power Authority asked that examining the definition of the proxy unit be included. Another stakeholder asked whether the ISO would consider adding the annual update process.
Mohrman said the ISO could look at the proxy unit definition and that the annual update process was something it would be examining as part of the review regardless.
“Nothing’s really off the table for this,” she said. “We just want to highlight some of the alternatives we’ve already identified.”
Leveraging Outside Cost Estimates
Currently the ISO hires a consultant to estimate the capital costs of each potential type of peaker plant using bottom-up engineering assessments. The assumptions used for those assessments have historically been the subject of considerable stakeholder debate. Rather than go through that process every four years, the ISO would use peaker plant cost estimates developed by external entities.
“Two organizations we could look to potentially leverage are [the National Renewable Energy Laboratory] and the [U.S. Energy Information Administration],” Mohrman said. “They regularly publish estimates of capital costs. We’re looking into that further, and that could also be used, potentially, to help the annual update process as well.”
Howard Fromer of Bayonne Energy Center said that the capital costs in New York are very different from national estimates and that costs within the state vary significantly by region. Using estimates that don’t capture New York’s realities could generate an inaccurate CONE.
Mark Younger of Hudson Energy Economics said that using external sources could waste time and effort if ISO staff ended up having to substantially adjust the external cost estimates to make them fit in New York.
Is the Demand Curve Working?
Several stakeholders questioned whether the demand curve and the CONE were appropriate market mechanisms at all. One stakeholder argued that the demand curve mechanism only worked to incentivize capacity retention and buildout if prices continued to rise. Another stakeholder representing New York City said that if the market is designed only to function upward, then it isn’t a market because it would incentivize overpaying and not price correction.
A third stakeholder, representing the transmission sector, said that in the past, the high price signals sent by the ICAP market would have incentivized new builds and eventual price competition. Currently, the price signal is high, but the vast majority of new generation is being built through state-level processes.
“We don’t have confidence that new entry will occur outside of [renewable energy certificates] and state-sponsored resources, and we don’t know what the accreditation factor change on those resources will be,” they said. “High prices could be sustained without a true competitive process capable of disciplining them. We need to make sure we don’t end up in that conundrum.”
Mohrman steered the discussion back to NYISO’s proposed solutions. She said the ISO was considering changing the shape of the demand curve. The curve has been linear since it was put in place in 2003.
“Alternative shapes and slopes may more accurately value resources according to their contribution to reliability, compared to this linear curve,” she said. “This may also address some stakeholder concerns that the current demand curve structure may result in wealth transfers to incumbent resources.”
Younger said that going with a steeper curve would result in more uncertain revenues and could possibly result in out-of-market actions, which may increase risk. Another stakeholder agreed, saying the steeper the curve, the greater price volatility.
Reliability Attribute-based Capacity Pricing
Michael Ferrari, a market design specialist for NYISO, took over to present the ISO’s proposal for valuing resources’ contributions to reliability via transmission security. He said the ISO is open to calculating separate resource adequacy and transmission security requirements for each locality, which would be traded separately as two different ICAP market products. This might mean creating a transmission security demand curve, transmission security capacity accreditation methods and new auction structures to solve both products.
“Potentially, as a secondary effort, we could leverage a framework to co-optimize with additional attributes in addition to transmission security,” Ferrari said. “These attributes may include … ramping inertia, voltage stability and quick cycling.”
Ferrari said NYISO would work with stakeholders to identify which additional attributes could be co-optimized with the ICAP market. He said it was possible that some attributes would be inappropriate and not work well as part of the market.
He said the purpose of all of this was to build more support for system reliability into the market.
Rezoning
NYISO divides New York into 11 capacity zones, labeled A to K approximately northwest to southeast. A is the Buffalo area, while J and K are New York City and Long Island, respectively.
The ISO wants to explore alternate ways to determine zone boundaries. This might mean exploring alternatives to the “New Capacity Zone” study, which examined deliverability across major transmission interfaces using a static set of system assumptions and conditions. The ISO is considering a probabilistic approach to identify system constraints and set zone boundaries.
The ISO is also considering increasing how frequently new zones can be considered for addition. The ISO lacks a mechanism to remove a zone and would explore whether having such a mechanism would improve price signals.