MINUTES – Service Management Forum (SMF)

MEETING: / 7
DATE: / Friday, 9 March 2018
TIME: / 10.00 AM – 11.30 AM
LOCATION: / Videoconference / Teleconference.
Contact: /

ATTENDEES:

Name / Company / Location
Tim Daly (Chair) / AEMO / Brisbane
Byron Baynham / AGL / Sydney
Ralph Becker / APA / Teleconference
Mark Perlow / Energy Australia / Teleconference
Reena Motapothula / Energy Australia / Teleconference
Ingrid Farah / Ergon / Teleconference
Michelle Sumner / Hydro / Teleconference
Tim Larby / Hydro / Teleconference
Rob Wilson / Jemena / Melbourne
Olivia Fleming / Origin / Teleconference
Brian Ashwin / Powercor / Melbourne
Anoop Nambiar / AEMO / Melbourne
Idris Shamsi / AEMO / Melbourne
Jo Dean (Secretariat) / AEMO / Melbourne
Lenard Bull / AEMO / Melbourne
Lionel Russell / AEMO / Melbourne
Rachael Uhr / AEMO / Melbourne
Rob Selbie / AEMO / Melbourne
Sumant Servesh / AEMO / Melbourne
Bharat Basappa / AEMO / Norwest
Celestino Velasco / AEMO / Norwest
Deep Juneja / AEMO / Norwest
Flora Pereira / AEMO / Norwest
Gaurav Saxena / AEMO / Norwest
Kant Uppal / AEMO / Norwest
Mankaran Marok / AEMO / Norwest
Phil Hayes / AEMO / Norwest
Suman Nerella / AEMO / Norwest
Anthony Mann / AEMO / Sydney
Daniel Custodio / AEMO / Sydney
Janet Mengel / AEMO / Sydney
Vipin Mathew / AEMO / Sydney
1. Welcome and Apologies

Tim Daly (Chair) welcomed participants to thefirst Service Management Forum (SMF) of 2018.

2. Confirm Agenda

The agenda was confirmed without any additions. Previous minutes are available on the AEMO website.

3.External Service Portal

Kant Uppal (AEMO) provided an overviewof the External Service Portal stating that the self-service portal is designed to enable the log of incident requests, track progress and status updatesaround any incidents going on in the market (including unit changes and outages and any ongoing incidents).The benefit is that this saves AEMO’s support team time and provides a transparency of service.

It will be announced soon when the External Service Portal will go live after the pilot has been completed with AGL’s assistance. Service Management Forum (SMF) members will be the first onboarded.

Action 7.3.1:AEMO to contact SMF members to commence onboarding of the new External Service Portal.

All participants agreed to a demonstration of the service portal. AEMO will distribute the plan and dates for the launch, organise demonstrations and facilitate.

Action 7.3.2: AEMO to coordinate and facilitate demonstrations to SMF members on the new External Service Portal

The External Service Portal is targeted to authorised contacts with existing relationships with AEMO and will not be available to every market participant. The self-service portal is for key contacts with AEMO and SMF members. Kant informed the SMF that pages on planned and unplanned changes and outages will be available to the public.

4.Pre-Production Systems Maintenance Windows

Kant Uppal(AEMO) advised that AEMO will publish the pre-production maintenance windows. This will outline outages and AEMO’s plans to manage these.

This will help in streamlining changes to the pre-production systems by:

•Advising participants when the pre-productionchanges planned for certain systems will occur.

•Better planning for participants with their pre-production.

This document has been appended to these minutes. (Refer Attachment 1). Kant requested SMF members circulate this to the appropriate people in their companies and respond with any concerns or questions by 9 April 2018 to ensure that expectations are set and what day AEMO

ACTION 7.4.1: AEMO to distribute Pre-production System Maintenance information to SMF participants. SMF to review and provide feedback by 9 April 2018.

5. Power of Choice

Lenard Bull (AEMO) provided the SMF an update on the Power of Choice (PoC) implementation informing that the implementation had commenced on the 4 December 2017. This highlighted an issue with thevolume of transactions in production which could not be replicated in testing.

AEMO worked with participants on issues that had arose and updated participants during the PoC daily stand up meeting on the progress of fixes. The system was unstable for approximately five to six weeks over this period, finally stabilising in the middle of January 2018. Lenard thanked the SMF for their patience.

AEMO resolved most of the remaining issues during a release on the 25 February 2018. Further releases will occur as required. A change was also made in how Change Notices are sent out. Moving forward some security change notices will not be addedto Change Notices, however, ongoing participant issues that have been resolvedas part of the change will be included.

Lenard noted that some outages had occurred without out notice acknowledging that AEMOhave had unplanned changes and that those outages that have had an impact on participants. The SMF were advised that AEMO do try to notify of any outages as early as possible, however, in some instances that work on fixing the issue overrode the release of a notification.

Leonard said that the SMF can contact him directly as an escalation point, should participants require further information on incident resolution on incidents first logged with the Support Hub.

Lenard’s contact details are: Lenard Bull () or (03 9609 8517).

6.Summer Readiness Program

Deep Juneja (AEMO) informed the SMF of a number of projects that went into production during the summer of 2017 – 2018.

The main projects that occurred during this time were:

  • Reliability andEmergency Reserve Trader(RERT)in a joint initiative with ARENA and third providers: modifications were made to this process.Updates were made to the Electricity Market Management System (EMMS) and internal systems, three interfaces were rolled out to the market progressively over November 2017 and December 2017.

Business processes such as contract acceptance and notifications to participants have been put in place.

  • NEM Settlement Shortfall Calculation: Company level mapping to the participant ID is now being conducted with the calculation based on the company’s net amount for any given billing week.
  • Security Deposit Calculation:In response to Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA) changes to security deposit calculation, where term deposits that mature in under a 31 day period are not to be broken. This effects AEMO’s capacity to access these funds. AEMO have worked with the bank and are moving from a fixed term deposit to an alternative enabling the calculation of interest in line with the Reserve Bank interest rates. This process ensures security deposits are always available to offset potential settlement shortfalls.
  • Dynamic Lack of Reserve (LOR) Stage 2 for South Australia: This will assist with reporting the LOR conditions to the market. Participants will see improvements to the reporting of LOR conditions.
  • Automation of Market Suspension Pricing: The process has been altered from a manual automation to a more robust and efficient system.
  • Seven Day Pre-Dispatch: This project accesses the short-term gas supply for gas fired generators and provides a seven-day forecast of NEM dispatch to the market for transparency.
  • Generator Recall Plan Interface: A new interface has been rolled out to gather information from generators to ascertain the change in capacity of scheduled generating units.

Suman Nerella (AEMO)commented on the Medium Term Projected Assessment of System Adequacy (MT PASA) project that was rolled out in November 2018 and is currently in the external trial period, the final production date is scheduled for 30 May 2018. This date is dependent on outcomes from the current trial.

Celestino Velasco (AEMO) confirmed that the MT PASA project a six week trial was currently underway. AEMO are looking to publish the second brief of the MT PASA data feeds along with MT PASA visualisation on the AEMO website. Participant bids and offers used in the trial come from the production system, Celestino commented that there seemed to be a lot of queries around this matter. Submissions from participants in pre-production are not used.

7.Release in the Pipeline

Gaurav Saxena (AEMO) outlined the list of projects by AEMO for next six months. The top three for the mid year release are 5 minutes participant Forecast, NEM Market Generator as Parent National Meter Identifier (NMI) and NEM Shortfall and Surplus.

5-Min Participant Forecast

This project will see proof-of-concept undertaken with industry (forecasting service providers and currently operating NEM wind and solar projects) to demonstrate the benefits of wind and solar generator self-forecasting. A three stage project is proposed, broken down as follows:

  • Build and deploy an IT interface to receive, verify and implement participant 5 minute self-forecasts into National Electricity Market Dispatch Engine (NEMDE). A tentative end of May 2018 release is scheduled with wind farms providing, under a trial basis, a 5 minutes forecast to AEMO.
  • ARENA expression of interest and funding round to recruit three to four suitable projects to participate in the market trial.
  • Quantify realised benefits of the trial, including evaluation of the relative merits of a variety of different forecasting technologies.

The release schedule will be published around the 16March 2018 followed by technical specifications on the 19 April 2018. At this stage, the pre-production schedule date is the 3 May 2018 for production on the 31 May 2018.

Post script: Since this meeting it has been ascertained that this project would be delivered as a 3 stage project, with the database changes targeted for 31 May, while the IT interface (web API) to be implemented in August, and followed by Participant Data Model changes likely deployed in September 2018.

NEM Market Generator as Parent National Meter Identifier (NMI)

This projects objective is to make the system and process changes required to allow a parent-child relations between two generators in an embedded network. This will affect the registration, metering and settlements team. Gaurav advised that AEMO does not have provisions to register trial generators, to work around this AEMO registered them as a market customer. This is an internal AEMO change.

The release scheduled will be published around the 16 March 2018, with pre-production on the 3 May 2018 and production date scheduled for 31 May 2018.

NEM Shortfall and Surplus Project.

This project scope is to enablethe system and process changes required to ensure that market participants are charged correctly in the case of a Shortfall Calculation in the NEM and automatically generate invoices to participants if that occurs. Surplus mechanism to apportion payment back to market participants who received less money due to a shortfall

was delivered in November 2017. There will be no further participant side data model changes for this project other than the ones published already on the AEMO website under the October to December 2017 release.

Security Deposit Application (SDA) Modification

The data model for this project was released in November 2017, with a production release on the 26 February 2017. The scope of this project is:

•SDA’s for NEM and Gas Supply Hub (GSH) to be more easily accessible

•Negates increased risk of settlement shortfall

•Update of current and new functionality made to existing applications

Gaurav Saxena (AEMO) informed the SMF of an additional project on the Gas Market System Releasesthat aims to modernise the existing platforms in the DWGM market. There are no business functionality changes, only internal so no participant impact is expected. This is scheduled to go live on the 19 March 2018.

The next project discussed was the Pipeline Capacity Trading which has a new market and a new day ahead auction market. Both markets will utilise the Gas Bulletin Board platform. The rescheduled is expected to be published on the 29 March 2018 and the technical specifications will be published on the 27 April 2018 and pre-production on the 12 November 2018 and is expected to go live on the 1 March 2019. More detail on this project will be covered in Item 9 of this meeting.

The final project being undertaken is the Gas Bulletin Board which addresses the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) rule changes. The go live date is scheduled for 30 September 2018 with the pre-production scheduled for the 31 August 2018. The key objective of this project is to make the necessary changes to the system report procedures and the billing arrangements for the Natural Gas Services Bulletin Board (NGSBB) to comply with the proposed amendments to the National Gas Rules (NGR).

The release schedules will be made available on the AEMO website.

8. Improvement to Information on NEMWeb

Rob Selbie (AEMO) informed the SMF that AEMO has recently refreshed the online interface NEMWEB, AEMO’s public market website that collects and collates a range of data relating to the National Electricity Market (NEM). This refresh helps clarify what data is available through NEMWEB.

One of AEMO’s goals is to promote greater information transparency and assist the market

and public in understanding how the NEM has evolved and operates. This refresh is providing definitions in transactional reports that have been added to assist understanding. No changes have occurred to the underlyingstructure or accessibility of the reports offered through NEMWEB.

NEMWEB currently provides:

  • Monthly extracts from public tables going back to 2009.
  • Grouping of reports for accessibility.
  • NEMDE files going back to 2009.
  • Gas Supply Hub data.
  • Transactional files for a variety of data sets.

Rob () welcomed the SMF to contact him directly or to the support hub for a presentation or demonstration of the new NEMWEB interface.

9. Gas Capacity Pipeline

Suman Nerella (AEMO)advised the SMF that the Gas Capacity Pipeline project involves collaboration with the Gas Market Reform Group (GMRG) to deliver anew Capacity Trading Platform (CTP) and Day Ahead Auction (DAA) market by 1 March2019.

COAG Energy Council launched a package of gas market reforms in August 2016. This included the reforms relating to gas transmission services that are expected to foster the development of a more liquid market for secondary pipeline capacity

The Key benefits are:

  • Enabling capacity to be allocated on a non-discriminatory basis.
  • Reducing search and transaction costs for participants.
  • Provides greater incentive for participants to trade at a greater capacity.
  • Compliance with Council of Australian Governments (COAG’s) decision.
  • Compliance with future Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) and National Gas Rules (NGR) obligations (to be enacted by September2018).
  • Provide market improvements – increased efficiency, transparency, liquidity.
  • Greater participation in the secondary pipeline capacity market.

The draft dates for industry testing is scheduled for November 2018 and market trials schedules for January 2019with the go-live production scheduled for 1 March2019. A separate forum is being organised by AEMO to cover this topic in further detail. Please register your interest in attending this at

Olivia Fleming(Origin) queried whether this includes all jurisdictions including WA. Suman confirmed the scope is limited to east coast gas market.

10. Active Directory Consolidation

Janet Mengel (AEMO)provided an update on the Active Directory Consolidation, advising that AEMO are currently in stage three of a consolidation which involves a migrationof existing log in ID’s. The next step to be undertaken is the consolidation of ID’s of the EMMS – FTP which is used for the wholesale electricity participants for the data interchange in the submission of the generator offers. As part of this internal testing has been completed and specific testing with one participant is currently being conducted to ascertain what impacts there are.

Once this is complete, AEMO will contact all participants with a list of current state login ID’s are for that system and conducting a review process with each participant individually.

AEMO would like to be in contact with participants who use this for system access to their respective IT systems to ensure that the various ID’s can be tested from development through to production.

Olivia Fleming queried whether this would be rolled out gradually or in a batch migration. Janet advised that AEMO were looking to migrate these in a group of 5. This can be tailored and customised to a degree for participants.

ACTION 7.10.1Anthony Mann (AEMO) to contact Olivia Fleming (Origin Energy) to coordinate this and organise involvement in the early testing.

Tim Daly (AEMO) added that AEMO have a recently approved identity access management program which looks at improving, modernising and consolidating AEMO’s approach, both internally and to the market focusing systems around identity and access. This is a three year program. This will be on the agenda in the upcoming SMF meetings.

11. Service Management Processes

Kant Uppal (AEMO) advised the SMF that AEMO have internal processesin how major or critical incidents are managed. The main contact for these is the Support Hub, however in cases where a direct channel is needed, AEMO are holding internal discussions and will release a table of contacts providing escalation points.

ACTION 7.11.1: AEMO to publish a list of contacts for escalation points.

Kant queried whether any participants would like to provide any feedback, insights or improvement suggestions on any items discussed.

Olivia Fleming (Origin Energy) requested an overview of the system availability and support hours. Kant advised that AEMO would follow this up.

ACTION 7.11.2: AEMO to follow up/publish on arrangement of system availability and support hours, including service arrangements.

Tim Larby (Hydro) queried whether AEMO will circulate details on escalations for major incidents to participants and whether this could include not only major incidents, but incidents in general. Kant confirmed that the details will be published on the portal. Anthony Mann (AEMO) suggested that he can be contacted directly with any queries on regarding this.

12. Next Meeting

To be advised.

Meeting Closed: 11:15