BPA ramps up its EIM readiness

BPA is moving quickly to make sure all the pieces are in place if it decides to move forward with joining the Western Energy Imbalance Market in March 2022. Being less than a year out from potentially participating in the EIM, the agency's success, should it choose to join the new market, depends heavily on preparing the workforce and its new systems for operations in the EIM. This is where two grid modernization projects - EIM Training and EIM Testing - become critical. Making sure BPA's workforce and systems are able to effectively interact with the California Independent System Operator is paramount to the agency's ability to participate in the new market.

In April, BPA began a series of training and testing phases that will ensure its systems and processes are ready for the March 2022 go-live date. The training project began rolling out content to staff who have directly-affected roles and the testing project launched functionality testing for each updated process necessary for interacting with CAISO. The testing program completed connectivity testing in May, which tests the communications between BPA's and CAISO's systems, and subsequently began integration testing of data and systems. The training and testing intensity levels will build as the agency approaches its potential market go-live date. BPA trainers and leadership will continue to fully support BPA staff impacted throughout the journey, ensuring workers have the skills and knowledge to succeed.

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'Joining the EIM should help us more efficiently manage congestion of the transmission grid, which in turn supports more efficient transmission expansion investments,' noted Michelle Cathcart, vice president of Transmission System Operations. 'But this relies on effective participation, which requires supporting our Transmission, Power and corporate organizations' staff as they move through a training and testing program that will become more intense the closer we get to next spring.'

The training program is coordinated to give workers the right amount of knowledge at the right time by aligning with CAISO's testing phases. Targeted training is bringing increased understanding of market operations, improved decision-making, and confidence in BPA's EIM operations for efficient and effective market participation. A ready and prepared workforce will allow BPA to achieve the grid reliability and financial benefits expected from participating in the EIM that can be passed on to customers.

'Ensuring our workforce is proficient in performing specific EIM tasks is central to BPA's performance in the market by improving decision-making, communications and accountability across our EIM functions,' said Suzanne Cooper, senior vice president of Power Services. 'The training program is a key component of our EIM readiness, ensuring staff are prepared to carry out EIM responsibilities if we decide to participate in the new market.'

BPA is applying a structured approach to build skills from conceptual ideas to hands-on experience. It includes mechanisms to retain and grow capabilities over time. This approach also applies to customer training on settlements. BPA plans to provide a high-level overview of settlements with a few examples of bills in late October or November. More detailed settlements training will take place starting in January 2022 when there is actual data from parallel operations that can be used to populate examples.

The testing program provides an opportunity to test the new components to make sure they will be fully operational and function properly by go-live, including testing whether each EIM project's systems function and integrate well with CAISO's. The testing program is broken down into five stages that gradually increase in complexity. In the last stage before go-live, parallel operations, BPA will complete a series of scenarios using real-world data in a test environment that will test our ability to produce bids for the market, balance load and generation in the balancing authority area and meet the market's dispatch signals. BPA must pass a series of these tests in order to meet CAISO readiness standards. BPA is also building permanent regression testing capability to provide long-term support of BPA's participation in the EIM, should we join. BPA provided information on customer opportunities to participate in the testing program at the June 17 EIM Implementation workshop.

These readiness efforts are yielding other benefits even if BPA decides not to join the EIM: The training and testing programs involve lots of collaboration, and a broad swath of BPA staff will have a greater understanding of how organized markets work. Each EIM project relies on upstream or downstream data or products and some elements require workers to change how they do their jobs. These efforts are strengthening the workforce by building new capabilities and skillsets, which will be beneficial whether BPA joins the EIM and/or pursues other market opportunities in the future.

BPA will make its final determination on whether to join the EIM in September. To date, BPA sees no barriers to joining the market but will continue its due diligence until the final decision letter is released this fall. To track the progress or for more background information, see the EIM website. BPA also has severalgrid modernization projects that support being ready to join the EIM. To learn more about the portfolio of projects or to see all that's happening with grid modernization, click here.

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