ISO New England’s capacity market proposal will bring reliability benefits to the region.
Gordon van Welie is President and CEO of ISO New England Inc.
An article in the April issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly, entitled "Scare Tactics," did a good job of describing the circumstances that led to ISO New England's "Pay for Performance" (PFP) proposal to fundamentally change its capacity market. The article also summarized well why some market participants oppose ISO New England's (ISO-NE) proposal. Unfortunately, the article leaned heavily on its own set of scare tactics when it did not present a balanced and accurate picture of the benefits of ISO-NE's PFP proposal and why a change in the overall market design is needed.
ISO New England's proposal has been designed to address the very real and escalating generator performance problems which, on numerous occasions, have threatened bulk power system reliability. As ISO New England's vice president of system operations, Peter Brandien, describes in his testimony in support of the ISO's PFP proposal, "nearly every category of generator has seen its rates of unplanned outages increase. Resources do not respond adequately to contingencies. Units are failing to staff their generators. Liquid fuel inventories are kept low, and units are mothballing their ability to switch fuels."