ISO-NE issues 2023 Annual Work Plan

ISO New England has issued its 2023 Annual Work Plan, outlining anchor projects and other notable initiatives for the coming year that are designed to secure power system reliability while facilitating the integration of clean-energy and distributed-energy resources across the regional power system.

Initiatives planned and already underway to advance a reliable, clean-energy grid target innovation, bolster efficiency, and help manage risks across the ISO’s markets, planning, operations, and software structures. Anchor projects include immediate and longer-term steps to ensure energy adequacy for the region, specifically during the winter; new market products to procure and transparently price day-ahead ancillary services essential to system reliability; and updates to the ISO’s resource capacity accreditation methods to better reflect individual reliability contributions from the region’s evolving mix of electricity generators.

Other continuing anchor projects include longer-term study of transmission infrastructure needs that reflect state decarbonization goals and an energy-security study that assesses the potential operational impacts of future extreme weather events, as well as work toward implementation of the next Generation Electricity Management (nGEM) market clearing software upgrade needed to manage an exponentially complex future grid.

The Annual Work Plan is published each fall and updated each spring. The ISO solicits input from stakeholders by sharing and discussing the plan with the New England Power Pool (NEPOOL) Participants Committee, and representatives of the New England states through the New England Conference of Public Utilities Commissioners (NECPUC) and the New England States Committee on Electricity (NESCOE). Ultimately, the work plan helps inform the ISO’s annual budget.