Pending Market System Software Changes

Over the coming months and years, the software underpinning the wholesale electricity market will continue to change and evolve as a result of both market participant and IESO initiated requests. The IESO approach to implementing change will be based on a series of releases. These releases will normally be scheduled for specified dates and will define appropriate content for each release as it enters development.

In support of IESO's commitment to provide market participants with the opportunity to review changes and provide feedback prior to their implementation into the Sandbox and Production Systems, we have published a Release Calendar identifying our proposed release dates over the next year. The intent of the calendar is to provide a 12 month rolling window with short term (1 – 2 months) and long term planning windows. The short term window, which is highlighted on the calendar, provides firm target dates, while the long term window provides proposed timelines with flexibility to meet the specific needs of the IESO and market participants. The timing of releases is intended to ensure that market participants are given sufficient notification and an opportunity to provide feedback to the IESO for changes that affect them.

The Release Calendar will be updated regularly to reflect dates as they firm up and to also provide updated links (indicated in the Release Calendar by underline) to Release Plans and/or Implementation Plans as they become available. The IESO may adjust the contents or timing of a release as circumstances dictate. In such cases, the IESO will endeavour to notify participants of changes to the Release Plan as soon as possible.

As the Release Calendar uses terms that are new and unfamiliar to participants we have provided a legend for your reference.

As described in the legend, IESO Market System changes are classified into 3 categories:

• Category 3 - change requires a technical interface change;
• Category 2 - change has functional impact on market participants; and
• Category 1 - change has no impact on market participants

The published release calendar identifies the software releases that contain changes that affect market participants (i.e. they contain category 3 and/or category 2 changes). The numbering of market-facing system releases reflect the classification of the release components and can be summarized by the examples below:

• Release 6.0, 7.0, 8.0 etc. - releases containing category 3 changes (and can also contain category 2 and category 1 changes); and
• Release 6.1, 7.1, 8.1 etc. - releases containing category 2 changes (and can also contain category 1 changes).

The release plans will contain details of the category 3 and category 2 changes associated with the release, but will not present the details of the category 1 changes as these changes do not affect market participants.

The IESO may implement additional 'interim' releases that contain only category 1 changes. These releases will be timed for implementation in between the Category 3 and Category 2 releases. Since these releases do not contain software that impact upon market participants, the release calendar and the release plan associated with these releases will not be issued to market participants. These Category 1 releases may require an outage that impacts upon market participant systems to facilitate implementation. The IESO will ensure that market participants are informed of any system outages required to implement software releases. The numbering of software releases that contain category 1 changes only, use the following convention: Release 5.0.1, 6.0.1, 6.1.1 etc.

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Notice: The posting of submissions on the IESO's Web site is done for the convenience of market participants and other interested visitors to the IESO's site. When requesting or receiving submissions from market participants and/or industry stakeholders, it is the normal practice of the IESO to post the submissions on the IESO Web site. The IESO reserves the right to revise or withdraw any such submission at any time without further notice should the submission include, in the IESO's opinion, any defamatory or other inappropriate provisions. Participants are reminded that all the material that they submit may be published and that, in making a submission, their permission to publish the material is deemed to be granted.