The Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) is the Crown corporation responsible for operating the electricity market and directing the operation of the bulk electrical system in the province of Ontario, Canada. It is one of seven Independent System Operators in North America.The IESO was established in April 1999 as the Independent Electricity Market Operator (IMO) under the Government of Ontario during the premiership of Mike Harris in preparation for deregulation of the province's electrical supply and transmission system. As part of government plans to privatize the assets of Ontario Hydro, the utility was split into five separate Crown corporations with the IMO responsible for directing the flow of electricity across the high-voltage, province-wide network owned by Hydro One and other transmission companies. It was also given the responsibility of managing and operating the competitive wholesale electricity market and working with neighbouring jurisdictions to manage an integrated North American electricity network.The IMO was renamed to the IESO in January 2005 as a result of the passage of Bill 100, which redefined the direction of deregulation and also led to the creation of the Ontario Power Authority.The IESO is an independent, not-for-profit entity. It is governed by a board whose directors are appointed by the government of Ontario, its fees and licences were set by the Ontario Energy Board and it operates independently of all participants in the electricity market.In April 2012, the Energy Minister of Ontario Chris Bentley introduced legislation in Parliament to merge the Ontario Power Authority and IESO. The merger was expected to take place in late 2012. After the Premier of Ontario Dalton McGuinty resigned in the fall of 2012, the merger was postponed.As of January 1, 2015 the IESO and the Ontario Power Authority were merged..
The development of the Common European Energy Data Space (CEEDS) emerges as a pillar to enable secure, interoperable, trusted, and resilient data exchange among stakeholders of the European energy system. We study the potentials for the CEEDS from an energy infrastructure perspective. We focus on the improvement of operational processes, reducing barriers to entry and to data exchanges, utilising AI-driven analytics, new cross-sectoral processes, and flexibility. Recent innovative projects and solutions implemented, show promising and relevant potential for the implementation of the CEEDS in the energy sector. However, there are still not enough empirical analyses of the impact of real-life energy data space initiatives, which are essential for implementing these large-scale solutions.
Large electronic loads, including data centers and cryptominers, exhibit fundamentally different characteristics than conventional loads. These characteristics include inability to ride-through for out of protection zone faults, high variability at potentially impactful frequencies, and facility consumptions similar to those of small to medium sized cities. This paper outlines the impacts and reliability concerns related to the aforementioned characteristics, while also offering a set of mitigating base performance requirements and technologies supporting meeting those requirements to facilitate successful integration of large electronic loads.
Flywheel systems are fast-acting energy storage solutions that could be effectively utilized to facilitate seamless adoptions for high penetration levels of variable power generation resources. This paper describes a real-world case study for the deployment of a 2 MW flywheel energy storage system to smooth the output power of a remotely located wind farm connected to the electricity grid of Ontario in Canada. Both the flywheel energy storage facility and the wind power plant are monitored and operated by the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) in Ontario. Also, the paper introduces a novel and practical Energy Management Controller (EMC) that has been implemented in the field to achieve the desired renewable smoothing. The performance of the implemented EMC has been investigated via changing three main input parameters: i) storage to wind ratio, ii) smoothing time, and iii) storage duration. To that end, seven case studies are conducted with different EMC input parameters to analyze the impacts of these parameters on the smoothing performance of the flywheel energy storage system.
This paper presents a model for generating battery storage offer curves that consider battery degradation costs. The generated offer curves are evaluated in various test cases, comparing different participation models on the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) system. The results indicate that improved State of Charge (SoC) management enhances market performance. Additionally, degradation cost accounted offer curves help reduce battery cycling costs and increase profitability.
Understanding the drivers of health and economic cost for the treatment of mental health conditions is critical to meet the accelerating demands for care. We conducted an economic evaluation of real-world healthcare-systems data from 27,540 patients receiving care for a mood or an anxiety disorder within the UK National Healthcare Service. Using Markov models built on discrete health states to compare the cost-effectiveness of different interventions, we show that the principal drivers of healthcare cost relate to waiting times and treatment effectiveness. We find that internet-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy has a ‘dominant’ incremental cost-effectiveness ratio relative to standard care, offering similar clinical effectiveness but with shorter treatment times. In most healthcare systems, the clinical effectiveness of mental healthcare remains unquantified, and long treatment times are common. The potential for these findings to inform mental healthcare policy is substantial, particularly around immediacy of access and the importance of outcomes-focused quality management.
