On March 9, 2017, FERC issued notice that FERC staff will convene a technical conference on June 26, 27, and 28, 2017 to explore opportunities for increasing market and planning efficiency through improved software. FERC staff will facilitate a discussion regarding advances in market modeling that have the potential to improve efficiency. FERC will accept comments following the conference, with a deadline of July 31, 2017.

FERC staff seeks speakers and presenters on the following topics for discussion: (1) improvements to the representation of physical constraints that are either not currently modeled or currently modeled using mathematical approximations; (2) consideration of uncertainty to better maximize expected market surplus; (3) improvements to the ability to identify and use flexibility in the existing systems; (4) improvements to the duality interpretations of the economic dispatch model, with the goal of enabling the calculation of prices which represent better equilibrium and are more incentive-compatible; (5) limitations of current electricity market software due to its interaction with hardware; and (6) other improvements in algorithms, model formulations, or hardware that may allow for increases in market efficiency. Speaker nominations are due by April 7, 2017, and must be submitted through FERC’s website at https://www.ferc.gov/whats-new/registration/real-market-6-26-17-speaker-form.asp.

The Notice of Technical Conference is available here.