An electricity-market participant that changes its schedule may make the system easier to balance rather than harder. FERC's uplift proposal, published February 7, would distinguish those effects when allocating certain real-time costs. The public-interest issue is who bears a charge and why, not an announced reduction in household electricity bills. [2017-02332][2016-30971]

Uplift payments can compensate resources for operating costs not recovered through market prices. Where regional operators already allocate real-time uplift to deviations, the proposal would link charges to transactions reasonably expected to cause those costs. It would not force operators using other allocation methods to adopt deviation charging. Helpful deviations would offset harmful ones hourly within the proposed allocation framework. [2017-02332][2016-30971]

A deviation here means a megawatt-hour difference between scheduled and actual delivery or receipt at a point, excluding changes tied to economic or reliability dispatch instructions. That exclusion matters: obeying an operator's instruction is not simply the same thing as choosing a different schedule. Proposed transparency would separately report payments in dollars and operator-initiated commitments in megawatts. [2017-02332][2016-30971]

A December fast-start proposal tackled another mechanism: incorporating eligible resources' offers into market prices. Its proposed definition requires startup within ten minutes, minimum run time of one hour or less and an economic energy offer. Eligibility is not a guarantee of setting prices. Together, the proposals address allocation and price formation; neither establishes lower bills, improved wages or an already implemented change in market behavior. [2017-02332][2016-30971]

Source documents

  1. Uplift Cost Allocation and Transparency in Markets Operated by Regional Transmission Organizations and Independent System Operatorshttps://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2017-02-07/html/2017-02332.htm
  2. Fast-Start Pricing in Markets Operated by Regional Transmission Organizations and Independent System Operatorshttps://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2016-12-30/html/2016-30971.htm