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VALLEY CLEAN ENERGY ALLIANCE
Staff Report – Item 12
To: Board of Directors
From: Mitch Sears, Executive Officer
Rebecca Boyles, Director of Customer Care and Marketing Sierra Huffman, Program and Community Engagement Analyst Subject: MIDAS Upload Update
Date: October 12, 2023
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RECOMMENDATION
Progress update on Valley Clean Energy’s actions to comply with the California Energy Commission's Market Informed Demand Automation Server (MIDAS) rates upload.
BACKGROUND
In 2020, California Energy Commission (CEC) worked with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), investor-owned utilities, publicly owned utilities, community choice aggregators, and other stakeholders to identify the steps needed to increase statewide adoption of demand flexibility-based rate options. The goal for demand flexibility is reducing peak load, as well as shifting load into periods of high renewable generation, similar to the functionality of our AgFIT Pilot Program.
In August 2021, the CEC published the pilot Market Informed Demand Automation Server (MIDAS), a statewide database of time-dependent electricity rates, CAISO Flex Alerts, and marginal greenhouse gas emissions data. MIDAS was designed to be the principal tool supporting the CEC’s load management standards or goal of increased demand flexibility.
MIDAS, with the help of automation technology, will provide price signals to shift or reduce load to electrical end users in real-time. The CEC required that the state’s largest utilities and large CCAs (including VCE) populate the MIDAS database with time-dependent rates by August 1, 2023, and all time-dependent rate modifiers by October 1, 2023.
CURRENT STATUS
Staff ensured the upload of all rates into MIDAS by August 1st and October 1 st of this year. This
included all Public Charge Indifference Adjustment amounts (PCIA), and our three energy options of Base Green, Standard Green, and UltraGreen. Both uploads were successful and VCE’s rates can now be located within, and downloaded from, the MIDAS database.
NEXT STEPS
VCE is working on contracting for ongoing MIDAS uploads with a third party.