MISO Files Tariff to Implement Look Ahead Commitment

The Midwest ISO has filed with FERC tariff revisions to establish a Look Ahead Commitment tool, a near-term Resource commitment process in MISO's real-time markets.

Look Ahead Commitment is a process that applies an advanced optimization-based security constrained unit commitment algorithm to improve the near-term commitment of Resources. The Look Ahead Commitment algorithm identifies Resource commitment and decommitment options for each interval of the Look Ahead Commitment process, with the objective of minimizing total production costs and meeting the forecast demand, Operating Reserve requirements, and other demand requirements, while staying within all relevant constraints.

Unlike the present Intra-Day Reliability Assessment Commitment (IRAC), the Look Ahead Commitment process is on-line, automatic, and near-term, as it runs automatically every 15 minutes or on-demand.

Because Look Ahead Commitment is an on-line process, all inputs and initial conditions are automatically generated, and best represent current and near-term future conditions (including system topology, for which Look Ahead Commitment relies on State Estimator information).

With its near-term intra-hour intervals, Look Ahead Commitment is in a better position to address intra-hour shortages due to changes in Net Scheduled Interchange, load forecast, or wind forecast, MISO said.

Since Look Ahead Commitment is designed to solve quickly and run automatically every 15 minutes or on demand, it improves MISO's ability to make near-term Resource commitment decisions, MISO added.

Look Ahead Commitment will allow MISO's system operators to consider up to three different scenarios of near-term future system conditions, with the ability to vary input assumptions for such scenarios, thereby improving their ability to match commitment decisions with actual system conditions.

MISO's operators will evaluate commitment and decommitment options under Look Ahead Commitment along with any recent system changes, such as line outages, generator outages, or late changes to Interchange Schedules, to best match the commitment decisions with actual system conditions.