Sygration News

October 3, 2011

Global Adjustment Success Newsletter

Ontario's Class A Consumers – those loads with a minimum of 5 MW or higher – are now charged the Global Adjustment portion of their electricity bill based on their demand relative to the top 5 peak demand hours in Ontario. With Autumn now upon us, we feel confident that the peak hours for the current baseline period have been set, and many consumers will be looking closely to how their curtailment strategies this past summer will pay off in savings for next year.

NRG Matters Corp and Sygration partnered together in the development of the Peak Advisory Notification Service (PANs) to help many consumers reduce their Global Adjustment costs. Clients that relied on the PANs service were advised to curtail only 38 hours and yet were able to avoid all of the top peaks, while those relying exclusively on DR3 curtailment activations only avoided one of the five peaks. The newsletter below illustrates how the new Global Adjustment Allocation program fared for many consumers, as well it provides a forecast of how much savings their actions will result in the next adjustment period.

To download the Newsletter, click on the following link: http://www.sygration.com/docs/GANewsletter20111003.pdf

June 14, 2011

PANs and Dashboard – Working Together to Reduce your Ontario Electricity Costs

The Real-time Forecast Error Tracking tool is the latest addition to the Sygration Dashboard, and it is the last piece of the puzzle in the tool-set for Class A consumers who which to reduce their Global Adjustment costs, forecast to grow to nearly $400,000 /MW by 2015.

The Global Adjustment for Class A consumers are determined based on their consumption during the top 5 peak demand periods in Ontario. NRG Matters Corp and Sygration have partnered together to help customers avoid these top 5 peaks, in order to reduce their Global Adjustment costs significantly. We do this through the PANS email-based notification service and Sygration Dashboard in several ways:

1. Monthly Email Advisories provide an analysis of the coming month and the likely peak values going forward
2. Day-Ahead Email Alerts inform customers of hours that are likely to set a peak in the next day
3. Current-Day Email Alerts confirm the peak hours, with more accurate forecast data
4. Long-Term Forecast Charts show the Ontario Demand for the next 14 days
5. The 24-Hour Forecast Window automatically updates to show the latest forecast and actual data
6. The Main Console alerts users of potential peak hours and changes to the forecast
7. Forecast Tracking Tools identify errors in the forecast in real-time, potentially indicating that the peak hour is shifting

Together, we provide a complete solution for industrial consumers that are able to curtail their load or activate stand-by generation. Please read the attached document for more information how these two services can work together to reduce your Global Adjustment costs.

PANs and Dashboard Working Together.pdf

June 9, 2011

Real-time Forecast Error Tracking added to Dashboard

A new version of the Sygration Ontario Dashboard was released today for tracking the 5-minute Ontario Demand forecast against the actual demand. The new module provides a real-time graph on your main screen showing the variance between actual and forecast demand. It can also generate alert messages whenever that variance exceeds a user's threshold setting. The 5-minute forecast is an estimate that is generated by the Sygration server by comparing the IESO hourly Pre-Dispatch against earlier days actual 5-minute demands. It then applies weights to these historical values, based on a number of factors, in order to create a composite detailed forecast.

The new feature is particularly useful to Class A consumers as they are charged Global Adjustment based on their consumption that is coincident with the top 5 peak periods. We expect to see significant shifts in Ontario Demand as a portion of this group, representing 2000 MW in total, withdraws their load for these top hours. This module will help these Dashboard customers identify if the demand is shifting higher or lower – potentially resulting in a peak moving to another hour – so they can adjust their own curtailment actions.

April 20, 2011

New Peak Advisory Notification Service (PANS)

Sygration has developed a new service through a partnership with NRG Matters that is targeted towards mid-sized industrial loads (Class A consumers that are 5 - 15MW). PANS provides a monitoring and communications service that is designed to help clients reduce their Global Adjustment costs through participation in the new Global Adjustment Recovery Method (5CP Global Adjustment Allocation).

For more information on the PANS Service, click on the following link: http://www.sygration.com/docs/pans.pdf

November 5, 2010

Global Adjustment to Increase 145% to $67 /MWh by 2015

A paper submitted to the OEB on behalf of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters group provided a detailed forecast of the costs associated with the programs under the control of the Ontario Power Authority and projected, among other things, how these will impact the Global Adjustment over the next 5 years. Authored by Bruce Sharp of Aegent Energy Advisors, the paper "Ontario Electricity Total Bill Impact Analysis – August 2010 to July 2015" is a research document into the costs associated with such programs as FIT, the Renewable Energy Standard Offer Programs, OPG and Bruce Power contracts, Natural Gas Clean Energy Supply contracts, and CDM programs. These programs and contracts are under the control of the OPA or paid directly to OPG, and will be executed over the next 5 years with the additional costs rolled into the current Global Adjustment mechanism.

The Global Adjustment is currently around $27 /MWh (2.7 cents /KWh). While the Aegent report includes additional forecast data on Transmission upgrade costs and cost increases associated with the Distribution networks, the table below shows only those costs that will be included in the global adjustment.

	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
Current (2010) $/MWh	27.00	27.00	27.00	27.00	27.00
Increase from 2010 $/MWh	6.90	15.82	19.67	30.40	39.71
Year End Forecast $/MWh	33.90	42.82	46.67	57.40	66.71

By early 2015, the report forecasts that the Global Adjustment will grow to over $66 /MWh (6.6 cents /KWh), exclusive of HST. For a 1 MW average load, that will equate to about $48,000 per month, which is in addition to the cost of HOEP.

Read the Aegent document here.
Full source data and contract summary information available on the OEB site here

August 30, 2010

Global Adjustment Allocation Changes

The Ministry of Energy released draft regulation on Friday August 26 that would see the allocation of Global Adjustment (GA) change significantly in Ontario, as a result of lobbying by the Association of Major Power Consumers (AMPCO) on behalf of its members. The GA is a fee that is collected by the IESO to pay for the difference between the open market price for electricity and long-term contracts established with Non-Utility Generators, OPA contract holders and Ontario Power Generation. It was introduced in 2005 and actually incurred several months where it was a credit to consumers – as a result of energy rebates by OPG – but has steadily risen since that time and has been approaching equity with the energy market price.

Year	Energy Price	Global Adjustment
2005	$71.43 /MWh	-$7.45 /MWh
2006	$48.47 /MWh	$4.36 /MWh
2007	$50.26 /MWh	$3.95 /MWh
2008	$51.42 /MWh	$6.12 /MWh
2009	$31.55 /MWh	$30.56 /MWh
2010 (Jan - July)	$39.13 /MWh	$25.82 /MWh

Global Adjustment is calculated on a monthly basis and has been typically $300M - $400M each month. This cost is currently allocated to major consumers based on their proportion of the total amount of energy consumed during the month relative to the amount of energy consumed by all Ontario loads in the same period.

The proposed regulation will change this method so industrial consumers over 5 MW (average monthly peak) – whether they are an IESO Market Participant or embedded within a distributor – will no longer pay Global Adjustment on a volumetric basis. This group will be designated as "Class A Consumers", while all others are designated as "Class B Consumers". Class A consumers will be allocated the GA during each 12-month reporting period based on their consumption during the five demand top load peak hours (on different days) of a past 12-month timeframe. The top five demand peak hours will be identified by the IESO based on their measurements of the Ontario Load, however, distributors will be asked to provide data on embedded generation and embedded Class A consumers for those hours in order to determine the final total system demand and group proportions for billing purposes.

During the transitional period, the regulation proposes that the first reporting (billing) period will run from January 1, 2011 - June 30, 2011 based on the allocation period of May 1, 2010 - October 31, 2010. Afterwards, the reporting (billing) period will begin every July 1 and run for 12 months, while the allocation will be based on the 12-month period ending April 30 of the same year.

All Class B Consumers will continue to be allocated on a volumetric basis, but only after factoring in the amount of funds collected towards the monthly total by the Class A Consumers. Therefore, if the Class A group is able to reduce their share of the Global Adjustment total amount, then the Class B group will have to make of the difference. If the Class A group actually increases their share of the Global Adjustment amount, then the Class B group will benefit.

The Sygration Market Dashboard includes several tools that allow industrial consumers to track and avoid the coincident demand peak for the purpose of reducing their monthly transmission demand charges. The use of these tools are even more important for reducing their allocation of Global Adjustment as much more costs are at stake; and the Sygration Dashboard suite has been enhanced to include long-term trends and historical analysis from past years.

• Current and Forecasts for Ontario Load (an estimate for total Energy Withdrawn)
• Console Alerts for Ontario Load
• Long-Term Graphs showing Ontario Demand Forecasts
• Reports on historical Ontario Load identifying the Peak Day hours in the current and past years

To view the proposed regulation, visit the Ontario Government Environment Registry at http://www.ebr.gov.on.ca/ERS-WEB-External/displaynoticecontent.do?noticeId=MTEwNzI0;statusId=MTY2MTgw;language=en

Update Nov 4, 2010. The Regulation 398/10 has been posted on the Service Ontario e-Laws site, here.

June 22, 2010

Avoiding the System Coincident Peak

The Sygration Dashboard suite was enhanced in the new year to monitor and alert users of a potential upcoming peaks in the Ontario Load (an estimate for system-wide AQEW). This was done to assist large industrial consumers that wished to reduce their monthly transmission network service demand charge by avoiding the coincident peak. Recently, there has been additional interest in using these same tools to also reduce their Global Adjustment charges as part the AMPCO-proposed 5 Coincident Peak method for allocating global adjustment.

The following link is to a short paper showing why and how large industrial customers can use the Dashboard today to reduce their demand charges. This includes the alerts, forecasts (including a new long-term forecast) and historical data which is available to Dashboard customers. It also addresses the validity of the Sygration Ontario Load parameter, which is provided a near real-time, by comparing its historical ranking to the IESO Transmission Tariff Demand Calculation results. Avoiding the System Coincident Peak (PDF)

If you have any questions, please call or write.

February 6, 2010

Market Dashboard Version 3

The Sygration Dashboard Version 3 was successfully released into production today. This version involved a complete re-write of the client-to-server communications and back-end data services, with the objective to improve the performance and scalability of the Dashboard.

Version 3 also saw the release of many new features, which were in response to customer requests or to the release of new IESO data:

• Sound module now supports Firefox and Safari browsers, using an Adobe Flash plug-in,
• Day 2 data is now available (i.e. Dispatch Day = Day 0, Day Ahead = Day 1)
• 5-Minute Console Price Alerts now include a Lower price threshold (an addition to the Upper price threshold),
• Many more 24-Hour Forecast Items have been added:
  • Dispatch and Predispatch Shadow Prices (almost 600 items covering 150 nodes),
  • NISL Shadow Price, Hourly Intertie Forecasts & Schedules (actual), and Hourly Delta MW,
  • Intertie Limits for Imports and Exports (26 total),
  • Constrained Off Market Transactions (such as Shared Activation of Reserve, Emergency Imports/Exports or Intertie testing),
  • Ontario Demand Forecast/Actual (in addition to Adequacy Ontario Demand forecast),
  • Ontario Load Forecast/Actual
• The Dashboard Layout no longer shows items you have selected in the "Available List", and when returning an item to that list it places it in the original location,
• A new Predispatch Alert tab has been added to the Dashboard Layout screen. It allows setting of alert thresholds for Market Demand (Constrained Energy), Ontario Demand, Ontario Load and Supply Cushion %. Thresholds can be set for upper and lower value crossings, as well the first 3 items allow for alerts to be generated based on the Monthly peak value seen to date.
• Generator charts appear when moving the mouse over the Generator Status lines,
• The Market Demand section has been replace by Demand Charts, where you may select to view Market Demand, Ontario Demand or Ontario Load. One chart can be selected, but peak values for all three can be shown in text.
• A User-defined colors (colours) allows you to pick your own border and high-light colors for data alerts.

The release process engaged a dozen customers and four weeks of beta testing to ensure there were no defects upon its release into production. Sygration is very grateful for this participation, and wishes to thank those customers for their commitment to ensure the high standard of quality was maintained.

May 5, 2009

New Jumbo Screen

Dashboard subscribers now have access to a new Jumbo screen. It provides a large view of key metrics of the Ontario Electricity Market, including the current price and demand information. It is ideal for running off of a dedicated computer or large screen so the market status can be viewed quickly by several people. You may customize your Jumbo Screen by clicking on the "Edit Layout" link at the bottom-right of the Jumbo screen.

A screen-shot and more information is avaialble at www.sygration.com/jumbohelp.html

Subscribers may access the Jumbo application at www.sygration.com/jumbo

May 5, 2009

New Supply Mix 2.0 Application

The Dashboard Supply Mix application has had a major face-lift. This screen synchronizes charts that show fuel supply, demand, imports/exports and prices within one common display. By moving your mouse over the charts, and by clicking on any hour, the application will display additional details for the selected hour; such as changes in demand, or the generators which ramped up or down during the hour. Version 2 has added several new features:

• Backward and Forward scrolling buttons now allows you to choose historical dates; you can scroll back in time to see what was happening at any hour in the past. You can then position your mouse over the charts and click on any hour of interest to view the details.
• The IESO System Status Report (SSR) messages that were issued in the timeframe of the selected hour (3 hours before, to 1 hour after) are now listed at the bottom, along with links to the IESO Website to view the source SSRs in effect around that time.
• The values for each Fuel Type (Nuclear, Coal, etc) and hourly change has been added
• The values for Market and Ontario Demand, along with the change to that hour, has been added
• When you move the cursor over the Generator Output details or the Fuel Type details, a graph will appear showing the last few days of history. Clicking on the new chart will bring you to the Generation Information page for the selected Fuel Type or Generator.
• A bug that affected Firefox users has been fixed. By clicking on the charts, the right-hand-side will be updated with the selected hour's data.

A screen-shot and more information is avaialble at www.sygration.com/supplymixhelp.html

Dashboard subscribers may access the Supply Mix application at www.sygration.com/supplymix

January 14, 2009

OPG Emissions Forecast Report

A new report was added today to the Dashboard Reports area www.sygration.com/reports, called "OPG Emissions Forecast".

OPG has modified its operating strategy to accommodate a Ministry of Energy mandate that its coal-based generation does not produce CO2 emissions in excess of 19.6 Million Tonnes in 2009, and 15.6 Million Tonnes in 2010. This corresponds approximately to a total coal-based generation of 20 TWh in 2009 and 16 TWh in 2010. This report tracks the energy output of their coal-fueled fleet and uses a projection based on the previous 5-years of data to forecast how well they will be on target.

OPG's main strategy to achieve a reduction in energy from coal is to increase the price of their energy offers by an "emissions adder", currently estimated to be $7.50/tonne of CO2 ($7.35/MWh). You can expect to see this reflected in an increase in the market clearing price when these resources are scheduled in the market.

Update: June 11, 2009. Since forecasting the OPG Emissions began, this report has indicated that OPG will be well below its 20TWh, or 19.6 Million Tonne target for 2009. In order to adjust to such a low demand in coal generation, OPG has twice reduced their fuel adder, with the last change seeing it set to $0/MWh on March 17. The hot summer months, and high demand usually associated with increased air conditioning usage, has yet to arrive. While this may increase the rate of energy output from coal-fueled generation, the impact of the economic recession, inexpensive natural gas prices and the surplus of energy from new natural gas combined-cycle generators will still put downward pressure on the energy from coal. Sygration's current forecast has the energy from OPG Coal generation to be only between 12 TWh and 14 TWh. This is even lower than the target the Ministry of Energy has set for their 2010 emissions.

December 17, 2008

Dashboard Intertie Trader Module

A new module for the Sygration Dashboard was released into production today. The Market Dashboard Intertie Trader provides real-time and historical analysis of the electricity interconnections between Ontario and its neighbors. There are nine screens that include both historical, real-time, and forecast prices for energy flows for these interfaces. Interface prices and flows (where available) include those published from the IESO, MISO, NY-ISO, PJM, ISO-NE, and TransEnergie.

The Intertie Trader also includes several screens dedicated to the Transmission Rights Auction (TRA), where participants bid to own Transmission Rights across specific paths, for a period of time, and are compensated when congestion occurs on those paths. Transmission Rights are financial instruments which traders can use to hedge energy trades from reduced profits due to congestion, but they can also be owned completely independently. The Intertie Trader application provides a full history of the Paths and TRA rights, including historical congestion data, auction pricing data, dynamic nomograms providing a graphical view of coupled rights for NY and MI, and return on investment analysis.

An overview with screenshots of the Intertie Trader is available at www.sygration.com/intertiedocs/intertiehelp.html

Current subscribers can access the application through the Dashboard, or at www.sygration.com/intertie

October 22, 2008

Greenfield Energy Centre Begins Commercial Operations

The largest Natural Gas Generating Station on Ontario entered commercial operations this week in Courtright, near Sarnia. The Greenfield Energy Centre, which is a 1050 MW combined cycle natural gas generation station, successfully completed its commissioning phase and began full dispatchable operations on October 17. The station was developed through a limited partnership between Calpine Corporation and Mitsui & Co. Ltd., and was awarded a 20-year clean energy supply contract by the Ontario Power Authority in 2005.

The station utilizes three Siemens-Westinghouse 501F Natural Gas Combustion Turbine Generators, each with a nameplate capacity of 212MW, and one Toshiba Steam Turbine Generator rated at 517MW. The plant uses a modern combined-cycle design to achieve high thermal efficiency while utilizing advanced emission controls, such as Dry Low-NOx combustion and Selected Catalytic Reduction, to reduce green-house gases and carbon dioxide emissions. When operating at full capacity, the unit will surpass the individual 880MW Darlington nuclear units as the largest single generating unit in Ontario.

July 15, 2008

Demand Response Tools for Aggregators

Two application suites are now available for companies that provide Aggregation services to their clients. Sygration's Demand Response Aggregator Manager and ELRP Aggregator Manager are separate services that are hosted from the Sygration site. Both web-based services provide Aggregator Companies with the ability to manage client accounts, generate email alerts based on energy prices or emergency events, and monitor end-user responses through a web interface that is branded with the Aggregator's custom information and corporate logo.

The Demand Response Aggregator Manager was developed for Aggregators that participate in the Ontario Power Authority's (OPA) DR1 voluntary demand response program on behalf of their customers. The back-end server monitors Predispatch energy prices and automatically generates email alerts directly to clients based on their individual strike prices, as well it reports to the Aggregator's administrator. Users are directed to the aggregator-branded site to enter their load curtailment quantity, where the administrator can monitor overall responses or enter them on a client's behalf if necessary.

DR Aggregator Manager (administrator's screen)	View PDF File
User Commitment Facility (client's screen)	View PDF File

The ELRP Aggregator Manager is suited for Aggregators that participate in the Ontario Independent Electricity Operator (IESO) Emergency Load Reduction Program. The Aggregator administrator creates an ELRP Event by selecting the date and hours to issue (in response to the administrator receiving notification by the IESO). The system then alerts clients using via email and again directs them back to the aggregator-branded application where they can enter their load curtailment quantity.

ELRP Aggregator Manager (administrator's screen)	View PDF File
User Response Facility (client's screen)	View PDF File

May 22, 2008

Predispatch Convergence and Intertie Congestion Reports

Two long favorite Sygration pages have received tune-ups and were released to Production today; the Ontario Predispatch Convergence Report and the Import / Export Pricing Congestion Report.

The Ontario Predispatch Convergence Report has replaced the fixed $120 price threshold with a user-defined price threshold. Any 3-Hour Ahead Predispatch Price that exceeds your threshold will be flagged on the report. The original $120 price was used for the IESO's Transitional Demand Response Program (TDRP) which ended last year. The threshold you enter is stored in a browser cookie on your computer so it can be automatically retrieved by this page. The report also detects missing Predispatch runs that have failed to be generated (by IESO) or captured (by Sygration) in any hour and shows these on the report.

The Import / Export Pricing and Congestion Report shows energy and operating reserve prices for Ontario and the intertie zones. As before, any historical and forecast congestion is shown by highlighting the prices in red (import congestion) or green (export congestion), and you can choose to hide interface zones which you are not interested in seeing. The new features that have been provided include:

• You may select to show only congested zones. Non-congested zones are hidden, but Ontario base prices are always shown.
• You may select to show only congested hours. Non-congested hours are blank.
• The current dispatch hour is highlighted.

Your settings are stored in a browser cookie and used anytime you visit this page.

May 10, 2008

Portlands and Goreway Stations On-Line

Two new gas-fired generation stations began producing significant energy this week.

Sithe Canadian Holdings' 4-unit Goreway Station saw full output on its three gas-turbine units (G11, G12, G13). The station is located in Brampton and uses a massive air-cooled condensor unit for its steam turbines. When its steam turbine unit (G-15) comes on line, the unit will have a total rated output of 880MW.

In Toronto on the site of the old Ontario Hydro RL Hearn Generating Station, the Portland Station also saw full capability testing of its two gas-turbine units (G1 and G2). The station is owned by Portlands Energy Center LP, a partnership between OPG and TransCanada and provides much-needed energy to the downtown Toronto core. The steam-turbine (G3) is expected to be in service in December 2008 and will give the station a total output capability of 550MW.

November 28, 2007

Sygration Dashboard Reports

Dashboard Reports is a new feature that was added to the Sygration Market Dashboard service today. It is a collection of useful reports that allow subscribers to execute complex data queries directly against the Sygration data warehouse. Using the Sygration Query Express engine, users can view the data on-line or download the data in native Microsoft Excel.

The list of reports is expanding based on feedback and requests by Dashboard subscribers. The list currently includes such reports as:

• Recent Admin Pricing to HOEP (last 6 months)
• Intertie Curtailments & Segregated Mode of Operation (SMO)
• On/Off Peak Prices
• Realtime OPG Rebate and Global Adjustments (and OPG Revenue)
• Predispatch Price Bias
• Shadow Prices (Approx 150 Delivery Points)
• Time-of-Use Rates Analysis
• Station Monthly Summary (December 2003 to present)

Dashboard Reports is available only to subscribers of the Sygration Market Dashboard, and can be found at: www.sygration.com/reports

July 23, 2007

Paper: Utilizing Shadow Prices in the Ontario Electricity Market

Sygration is pleased to make available the paper Utilizing Shadow Prices in the Ontario Electricity Market. This paper is intended for readers that are familiar with the Ontario electricity market and have dispatchable generators or are considering becoming dispatchable.

The document explains how Shadow Prices can be used to determine theoretical dispatch instructions for various offer strategies. This would be useful to new generators wishing to develop a first-time bidding strategy, or to existing generators wishing to fine-tune their offers to acheive more desirable dispatches. It can also be used by non-dispatchable generators that are considering becoming dispatchable to maximize the opportunity of higher energy prices and to enter the operating reserve market. A technique is shown that uses joint optimization to determine dispatch quantities, market schedules and settlements credits using the historical shadow price data. Finally, the Sygration Generation Market Simulator service is introduced as a commercial alternative to parties considering implementing these techniques in-house.

The paper can be downloaded at www.sygration.com/docs/UtilizingShadowPrices.pdf

July 9, 2007

Sygration Supply Mix and Zone Map Reports

The Supply Mix Page is one of two new live reports that are available to Sygration Dashboard subscribers. This report combines 4 time-synchronized charts onto one page for showing the relationships between Generator Fuel Supply, Market and Ontario Demand, Intertie flows and Market Prices. The report allows the user to pan and select a specific hour where detailed data will appear for that hour on the right-hand side. Data for the selected hour includes Generator Changes greater than 20MW, Interchange schedules and flows, Market Prices and Generator Outages..

The second report is the Zone Map Page, which provides a live graphical view of Ontario's energy congestion by mapping fifteen Shadow Prices across the province. The map is shown as ten separate regional zones with each having a background color corresponding to the real-time shadow price for that area. The report uses recent Adobe Flash technology and requires the free Flash Player 8 or above plug-in for your browser.

Screen-shots and more information are available at:

• Supply Mix Page
• Zone Map Page

Live Reports (Dashboard users only - links are also placed on the Main Dashboard Console):

• Live Supply Mix Page
• Live Zone Map Page

June 30, 2007

Sygration Demand Response Aggregator Manager

Sygration is pleased to announce the availability of a new Demand Response service for local distributors and energy aggregators. The Demand Response Aggregator Manager is a service provided to companies that offer demand response aggregation services to their customers. The application resides on Sygration's servers and is accessible using a standard web browser, however, it can be branded with the aggregator's own logo.

The application allows the Aggregator administrator(s) to configure individual Strike Prices for each of their participating customers, so that email alerts are automatically generated when the forecast energy price exceeds any Strike Price. The individual email alerts are sent to each Participant, while a summary report is sent to the Aggregator. The application also allows the Aggregator to enter the amount of Committed Demand Response (KW) that each Participant is willing to provide, and tracks an hourly total for submission to a Demand Response Plan sponsor.

Details on the new service is available at http://www.sygration.com/agghelp.html

March 1, 2007

Sygration Generator Report Changes

The Ontario Generator Report has undergone a major facelift and includes more valuable data. The changes to the report include:

• New Generator status buttons indicate how much of their maximum continuous rating each generator is operating at
• Hourly unit Capability has been added and you can now toggle between Output and Capability data
• Fuel types for the original "Other" group have been replaced with either "Gas", "Gas/Oil" (for Lennox), or "Wood Waste"
• Hourly Prices show pre-dispatch and dispatch (HOEP) as a different font color
• The file size has been reduced by 70%, resulting in a quicker download/refresh time
• Borders between data cells are thinner, resulting in an easier to read report

The report can be viewed at http://www.sygration.com/gendata/today.html

March 1, 2007

Sygration Market Dashboard New Adequacy Data

Up until last Thursday, the IESO only published Ontario Adequacy data to support the DACP process, meaning this data was not updated beyond the first 4 pre-dispatch versions. They now publish this data for all remaining pre-dispatch runs and have also included forecast Exports for the first time. This data is now available on the Dashboard and will continue to update for each pre-dispatch hour. You may notice on your Dashboard that most items are no longer prefixed with "DACP" but are now prefixed with "ADQ", example "DACP CAPACITY ONT MW" is now "ADQ CAPACITY ONT MW".

Only the "DACP ENERGY $" remains unchanged to reflect the DACP Pre-dispatch of Record, as these prices are used for calculating import intertie failure charges. The smart links to the DACP versions of Pre-dispatch Prices, Adequacy and Reliability reports will continue to be available (top-right of Forecast Window).

While forecast Exports are now included in the data, you may notice that these have been forced to 0 MW for the first four pre-dispatch versions of the day-ahead run. The IESO blocks day-ahead Export bids from entering the market operating system until the DACP process has concluded.

An additional forecast data item labeled "ADQ DOM SUP CUSH %" represents the Ontario Domestic Supply Cushion. This item indicates how much remaining domestic energy, as a percentage of total domestic energy requirements, is available on the stack for each forecast hour. This remaining energy includes both offered but unscheduled Ontario generators, and scheduled Ontario dispatchable loads (which can be dispatched down at high prices). It is a useful indicator of prices and price volatility, and can be negative to indicate that imports will be required to meet the Ontario demand.

The list of available forecast items has been updated in the Dashboard help and overview page. You may view this page at http://www.sygration.com/dbinfo

August 24, 2006

Brookfield Power's Prince Wind Farm On-Line

Prince Wind I began commissioning their wind turbines and are now reporting output and capability data, available on the Sygration site under PRINCEFARM. The wind farm is located in the townships of Prince, Dennis and Pennefather, near Sault Ste. Marie, and is owned by Brookfield Power's subsidiary Superior Wind Prince Power Inc. Prince Wind I is first phase of the wind farm and will have a total capability of 99 MW installed on crown and private land. Prince Wind II will see and additional 90 MW in service by Spring 2007.

Access the current and historical output at http://www.sygration.com/cgi-bin/geninfo?g=PRINCEFARM

The commissioning activities over the last week have resulted in peak output of between 6 and 12 MW. Ultimately, both phases of Prince Wind will include a total of 126 General Electric wind turbines each with a capability of 1.5MW. The turbines are connected via a 34.5kV buried cable collection system and are transformed for connection to the IESO controlled grid between MacKay TS and Third Line TS.

July 17, 2006

DR Load Shifting Calculator Released

A new demand response tool was release today for industrial and large commercial consumers. The Sygration Demand Response Load Shifting Calculator was developed for companies that are able to shift their power consumption between hours to take advantage of lower cost electricity rates within a day. Using the most recent historical and forecast energy prices, along with the user's planned hourly energy consumption, the Load Shifting Calculator estimates the total expected energy costs for the current or next day. The tool allows the user to adjust their energy plan and shift consumption away from higher-cost hours to reduce total energy costs while meeting their total daily energy requirements. The tool can also be used by energy limited generators (small hydroelectric units with limited water resources) to determine their optimal running schedule.

The Sygration Load Shifting Calculator is currently free of charge to registered uses. More information is available at http://www.sygration.com/drcalcsample.html

May 31, 2006

Market Dashboard Includes DACP

Sygration released a new version of the Market Dashboard today to coincide with the IESO's Day Ahead Commitment Process (DACP). If you are a regular user of the Sygration Dashboard, you will notice several new enhancements:

• The Hourly System Forecast now includes Day Ahead pricing, Adequacy and Reliability Commitment data elements. A total of 22 new DACP elements are available to choose from. You must choose the new elements (via the [Edit Dashboard] -> Content Selection tab) for them to be included in your Dashboard.
• A link now appears at the top of the System Forecast window that allows you to switch between the Current Day and the Day Ahead. Prior to the first predispatch run at about 11:30EST, the Day Ahead window will only show SSR forecast data.
• The names of the data elements of the System Forecast have been renamed (pre-pended with a short abbreviation) for easier organization and recognition:
  • PD/DISP for predispatch and dispatch data
  • SSR for System Status Report, hourly forecast data
  • DACP for Day Ahead Commitment Process Data.
• New DACP report links have been placed at the top of the System Forecast Screen. When you click on one of the new or existing report links, these will now take you to the report that includes data for the day you have selected (Current or Day Ahead).
• The Weather icons have been replaced with the smaller versions (courtesy of The Weather Network), allowing more icons to be placed on the screen. While the setup screen allows you to select cities across Ontario, data is available for most North American cities and will be added by request.
• Price and Generation charts have been improved for easier viewing and access to historical data. As well, market and shadow price reports now allow you to scroll back 14 days.

The Sygration Dashboard is a subscription-based service available only to subscribers. More information and screen-shots are available at http://www.sygration.com/dbinfo

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