**Executive Summary and Conclusions**

The overall design for Grid West regional services emphasizes physical
power transactions among its participants by making transmission
capacity available to Grid West participants. In line with this goal,
TSLG has focused on developing and refining processes and services that
maximize access to Grid West Managed Transmission System (GWMTS) for
Grid West participants through acquisition of transmission rights in an
efficient, equitable and timely manner. The various reconfiguration
services (RCS) have been proposed for Grid West for this purpose and
TSLG has worked extensively on designing RCS in such a way to meet this
critical Grid West regional services goal. Specifically, the RCS makes
transmission capacity available through; a) existing Available Flow
Capacity (AFC), b) voluntary resale of existing transmission rights; and
c) the voluntary sale of existing scheduling flexibility. The latter
being a major component of a Day-Ahead Redispatch (RDS) feature.

An Redispatch Serve (RDS) was included in the Regional Proposal[^1] as a
basic feature of Grid West. The purpose of RDS was to enable greater use
of the transmission system by getting advance scheduling commitments.
During the Layer 1 work of the TSLG difficulties were encountered in
attempting to design the RDS. Two primary implementation difficulties
were encountered, that appeared to have the potential for creating
severe market gaming opportunities.

-   First, since participation in RDS would be voluntary, only some
    schedules would be (financially) constrained by the day-ahead
    redispatch. However, because not all parties would be constrained to
    a day-ahead schedule, the congestion optimization achieved by the
    day-ahead redispatch could be undone by parties who retain and use
    their pre-existing scheduling flexibility after the day-ahead
    process ends.

-   Second, measurement of performance would be problematic. A voluntary
    day-ahead redispatch is a partial energy market. Deviations from
    day-ahead energy schedules must be settled against real-time energy
    deliveries. However, since not all participants in the day-ahead
    redispatch would be subject to a single set of prices of real-time
    balancing energy prices, how would reconciliation occur? Some
    parties would be in the CCA where a set of consistent real-time
    clearing prices would apply, while prices outside the CCA would have
    to be based on OATT tariff concepts or some other price indicator.

    When the day-ahead redispatch issue was revisited by TSLG at the
    start of the Layer 2 work, the reconfiguration service was better
    understood than during the Layer 1 discussion of RDS. In reviewing
    the intended purposes of the RDS, it became clear that one of the
    desired effect (getting parties to release a portion of their
    scheduling flexibility, i.e. commit to a generation plan day-ahead)
    could be accomplished through the Day Ahead Reconfiguration Service
    (DA-RCS). If parties with scheduling flexibilities (Generation
    operators, transmission right holders with various delivery points,
    etc.) could limit, or give up their scheduling flexibility in
    DA-RCS, the \"headspace\"[^2] set aside to preserve pre-existing
    rights would be reduced. That reduced \"headspace\" becomes AFC that
    can be sold as Injection-Withdrawal Rights (IWRs) in DA-RCS. Thus,
    by enhancing the DA-RCS to handle releases of scheduling
    flexibility, Grid West would realize a major portion of the RDS
    benefit while avoiding many of the RDS complications mentioned
    above. In other words, Through this proposal, DA-RCS achieves an
    important RDS objective, namely making more transmission system
    capacity available through voluntary offers to restrict changes in
    generation for the following day.

    With this modification, the typical day for pre-scheduling in Grid
    West fits easily into the general pattern of pre-scheduling used
    today. Trades for the next day occur very early in the morning
    followed by calls to various transmission providers to find out if
    transmission can be found to execute the trades. With this done,
    pre-schedules are submitted to the transmission providers. The
    DA-RCS replaces the calls to find transmission with a central
    auction where AFC is more readily available through a single
    centralized process that includes pre-release AFC, AFC made
    available by IWR releases, and AFC freed up by releases of
    scheduling flexibility.

[^1]: "Narrative Description of RRG Platform Group Regional Proposal",
    December 24, 2003, pp. 7-8,
    <http://gridwest.org/Doc/FinalNarrative_RegionalProposal_Dec242003.pdf>.
    The Regional Proposal described a Independent Entity (IE) that has
    since been given the name Grid West.

[^2]: Headspace is a term used to describe the capacity set aside prior
    to an RCS auction to preserve pre-existing rights, including the
    scheduling flexibility (or optionality) of generators and
    transmission right holders to change their schedules after the close
    of the day-ahead scheduling process.