Structure nMarket® OfferManager™

Streamlining the Generation Offer Management Process for Today's ISO/RTO Markets

In today's ISO/RTO markets, scheduling generation to match load without considering the actions of other market participants or market conditions is not enough. The ISO/RTO makes the unit commitment and economic dispatch decisions, and that means traditional generation offer strategies are changing.

Structure's new OfferManager™ lets you create, analyze, adjust and execute the best offers utilizing both ISO-defined and custom algorithms to determine generation unit costs. OfferManager provides an asset manager unmatched visibility into resource and market information required to make decisions and quickly modify generation offers to reflect changing market conditions or expectations. OfferManager eliminates costly errors such as missed submission deadlines, units offered below cost, or offers that do not reflect actual unit capabilities. OfferManager provides comprehensive audit capability and is easily integrated with upstream and downstream applications systems utilizing standard, XML interfaces.

You Define the Strategies . . . OfferManager Creates the Offers

OfferManager allows you to automatically create generation offers according to pre-defined strategies, pre-validate the offers against ISO and user-defined rules, and provides the asset manager with decision support capabilities to determine the optimal offer strategy. This allows asset managers to spend less time on logistics and manual processes and more time executing their strategy.

Market Specific - Easily Integrated

Like all Structure nMarket products, OfferManager addresses the specific requirements of each ISO/RTO market in a consistent and powerful platform to optimize the offer management process. OfferManager is easily integrated with upstream generation management, fuel planning, optimization, and deal capture systems utilizing standard, XML-based interfaces.

OfferManager Key Features

• Includes standard methods to create cost and market based offers
• Provides the capability to plug-in custom methods for offer creation
• Pre-validates offers against ISO and business rules prior to submission to ISO
• Supports the ability to manage each configuration of a combined-cycle plant
• Maintains and submits outages to the ISO/RTO
• Provides quick-edit capabilities to allow users to adjust offers graphically or via percent or absolute value adjustment
• Provides detailed audit trail that captures offer input data used to create offers as well as each version of an offer
• Allows each user to subscribe to notifications when data inputs change for a particular unit (ex. fuel price or operating limits)
• Provides customizable screen layouts and window attributes for each user
• Creates similar day LMP forecasts
• Provides up to date graphical decision support capabilities for key market and offer analysis information
• Tracks emissions credits and usage
• Tracks fuel prices inventory and usage
• Calculates profit and loss by generation asset and by portfolio
• Submits energy and ancillary services offers to the ISO
• Supports programmatic inbound APIs for key inputs

Superb Functionality for Today's Demanding ISO/RTO Markets

Centralized functionality - Automation and fewer tools required

• Replaces multiple spreadsheets and automates manual processes
• Efficient roll-out of software enhancements and releases
• Provides a historical repository of all offers for audit trail purposes
• Allows strategies to be applied consistently across users

Customizable - Provides ability to plug-in custom methods

• Leverage OfferManager framework to execute your proprietary strategy
• Maintain customer-specific methods without modifying the OfferManager product
• Quickly and consistently implement new strategies

Quick-edit - Change offers at portfolio or unit level

• Graphical offer adjustments - reduces grid entry to save time and reduce errors
• Percent or amount offer adjustment
• Apply changes over a range of intervals for multiple units
• Pre-validate and submit offers directly from Quick-edit

LMP forecast - Similar day method

• Based upon similar gas price day, load forecast and weather day
• Ability to create custom plug-in to shape the forecast

Maintain outages - Support submission to the ISO

• Import planned outage information from outage management system
• Enter intra-day outages/derates and submit to the ISO quickly
• Validate offers against latest outage information

Integrated decision support - Watch conditions change and act

• Each decision support graph can be set to independently refresh
• Determine generation in-the-money both before the market closes and after
• Price comparison (multiple forecasts, day-ahead, real-time)
• Determine volumetric position (sources versus obligations)
• Fuel management (fuel inventory)
• Emissions tracking (emissions inventory)
• Profit & Loss determination by unit
• Others

Fast and flexible GUI - Each user can customize views and filters

• Administrators control user interface changes through SecurityManager
• Create templates and identify as public or private
• Memorize module settings for each user
• Modify which columns to display, in what order and customize column names
• Drag columns into the filter section dynamically

Data validation

• Manage large volumes of data
• Pre-validate offers against both ISO and business rules before submission
• Eliminate costly mistakes

Notification - Subscribe for alerts to data change events you care about

• User level configuration of which data change events trigger user notification
• Subscribe to data change events at the unit level

Notifications initiate pager or emails Market changes - This is our core competency

• OfferManager addresses the market specific nuances of each ISO
• OfferManager will stay current with the market rules as they evolve

Audit trail - See all the actions taken by user

• Track every modification of an offer
• Capture all the inputs used to create an offer

Security - Flexible system administration

• OfferManager utilizes SecurityManager to support fine-grain security
• Define use of OfferManager by user group or plant location

Submission - Seamlessly submit offfers to ISO

• Users will not need additional modules to submit the offers to the ISO
• ISO offer statuses will be viewable in OfferManager

Supports inbound standard interfaces (APIs) for:

• Unit Heat Rates
• Market Prices
• Fuel Prices
• Obligations
• Load Forecast
• Fuel/Emissions Consumption
• Operational Parameters
• Weather