FERC Filings
EPSA Comments on GRSI NOI
Comments
EPSA has a significant interest in the NOI because the potential disclosure of proprietary and competitively sensitive commercial and financial data can harm EPSA members’ competitive businesses. Additionally, competitive suppliers would be responsible for providing GRSI data and burdened with formatting and reporting, thereby increasing costs that cannot be passed through by EPSA members.
While EPSA supports the elimination of discrimination and market abuse in a timely manner, it does not feel that collecting voluminous amounts of GRSI will get the Commission closer to meeting that goal. Therefore, EPSA believes that the Commission should not pursue collection of GRSI. However, should the Commission go forward with this effort, competitive suppliers believe that the Commission should, through a technical conference, adopt an approach similar to that suggested by Commissioner Brownell at the May 25, 2005 Sunshine meeting.
Commissioner Brownell asked several questions on the Commission’s need for GRSI information, how the information should be collected, who would be responsible for maintaining the information and how the information will be used by the Commission to ensure against discrimination. Commissioner Brownell’s insightful comments highlighted that, while the NOI identifies these areas, it often lacks a full justification of how a GRSI collection effort will directly address and benefit the Commission’s efforts to identify discrimination and market abuse.
Competitive generators share Commissioner Brownell’s concerns about balancing the responsibilities and burdens associated with information gathering efforts against the benefits of such efforts. Any Commission effort must not harm the the ability of EPSA members to compete nor burden them with unnecessary data reporting.
The list of generation run data contained in the NOI is extensive. The NOI defines that the generator run status information would include: (a) the status of breakers; (b) generating unit megawatts (MW) and megavolt-ampere reactive (MVAR) capability based on generator-tested performance capability data; (c) MW and MVAR net output; (d) the status of automatic voltage control facilities; (e) unit dispatch levels; (f) unit outages or deratings, including the reasons for the outages or deratings; (g) the date and time when the unit was taken out of service or derated and the estimated (and later, the actual) date and time when the unit is expected back online following and outage or derating; and (h) generator-tested performance capability data.
Competitive suppliers are concerned not only about the extent of the physical operating data sought but also that the NOI does not then specify how the GRSI gathered will be used to pinpoint discriminatory market behavior and identify market abuse. Certainly the disclosure of this information could give the some generating units a competitive advantage over others. Some of those competitors who might be advantaged are not jurisdictional to the Commission and therefore would not have to report GRSI data. Consequently, jurisdictional competitive suppliers do not want to open themselves to competitive harm when there is no specific evidence that providing GRSI will identify and limit discriminatory practices and behavior.
The NOI notes that there was no clear industry consensus reached by the North American Reliability Councils’ (NERC) Electronic Scheduling Collaborative (ESC) when it considered collection of the same GRSI data elements. The NOI however, uses the same data elements to define GRSI as the NERC’s ESC contemplated in 2001. Since the same information set is used in the NOI, the deadlock of the past NERC ESC effort suggests that it will be difficult to establish industry consensus regarding what constitutes the needed GRSI in the instance proceeding as well. Importantly, the NOI does not explain why it defers to the same information items that the ESC considered four years ago. Furthermore, there is no justification that the ESC GRSI items are still pertinent to identify discriminatory market behavior. Therefore, the deadlock among market participants is unlikely to change without some new support for the information items and their use.
EPSA suggests rather than using the ESC GRSI list of elements for submission to the Commission that, instead, the Commission look to information being collected in organized markets. The RTOs, ISOs and market monitors in those markets have at their disposal significant portions of the GRSI defined in the NOI. A technical conference would give the Commission the opportunity to establish the GRSI elements, how the material is maintained and the frequency of its collection, if applicable. The information-sharing aspects of a technical conference would help establish how such information can be used to distinguish potential market abuses. The market monitors would be able to suggest how the information could be maintained and point out consistent practices for the development of a GRSI template and a system for maintaining GRSI. The GRSI template could then be used by generators in those regions without organized markets. The generators could maintain the information in the standardized format so that it would be available expeditiously should the Commission request the information.
By using the experience and systems of the market monitors to standardize GRSI, the Commission could rapidly investigate potential discrimination, while avoiding having to regularly collect massive amounts of GRSI data. First, this process would give the Commission a common set of GRSI maintained in a consistent way by organizations already monitoring such information. This would avoid revisiting the now moot but difficult debate the ESC engaged in four years ago and let the industry and the Commission avoid providing and processing retrospectively unnecessary data. Further, competitive suppliers would not have to duplicate information already provided or maintained in organized markets. In the end, a “data dump” is not in the best interests of EPSA or the Commission. Second, it will provide the Commission with the opportunity to tap into the market monitors expertise and experience to see how the Commission can best identify potential market abuses by analyzing GRSI.