MCG Energy’s Integrated Asset Manager System (IAM) is a full featured, easy-to-use energy trading and energy scheduling software solution. IAM’s integrated asset management functionality includes bid capture, physical scheduling and tagging, market submissions, market clearing, real-time scheduling, performance reporting, and settlements. IAM fully supports scheduling and market submissions with all North American regions and markets.

Integrated Asset Manager

IAM’s integration means that information must be entered only once to create bids/offers, OASIS reservations, and e-Tags while adjustments and curtailments are automatically reflected in positions and performance reports. This makes settlement reconciliation easy with ISOs and counterparties, including drill-downs into the individual trades and tags of each settlement charge.

IAM is also a single system for managing generation and load forecasting, planning, submissions, positions, and settlements. It can be used to create load forecasts visually based on similar days, auto-create demand bids for submission to markets, import generation forecasts from your unit optimizer, manage unit parameters and auto-generate market bids, track market awards, and see scheduled vs. actual volumes in a single, fully integrated asset management platform. IAM also enables you to manage generation, load, physical flows, e-Tags, transmission inventory, market data, prices, and settlements in one system while seamlessly scheduling, tracking, and settling assets.

In addition, IAM energy scheduling software is an easy-to-use contract and transaction management system for the capture and scheduling of natural gas products, generation of confirmations, and performing checkouts and settlements.

Integrated Asset Management Product Details (PDF)

MCG Energy’s Hosted Data Services (HDS) merges data from IAM and all other MCG Energy software products into one hosted platform for reporting and data warehousing.

Work in All North American Energy Markets

MCG Energy’s IAM is a fully-integrated wholesale energy marketing and trading solution integrated with all North American physical bilateral markets and ISOs. Its user-friendly scheduling interface streamlines workflow for managing front-office and back-office operations including trade capture, transmission reservation management, fully integrated native e-Tagging, scheduling, bidding, dispatch, settlement, and reporting for all resources and loads.

IAM simplifies complex physical, financial, and ISO market operations, allowing an organization to focus on the important aspects of maximizing its operational efficiency and financial performance.

Key Features of the Integrated Asset Manager

Market Integrations – Functionality for all ISO and bi-lateral energy markets is integrated into a single system.
Transaction Management – Includes deal capture for ISO, bilateral, transmission, and all other financial transactions including ICE and NYMEX. Fee modeling and management allows for the creation of an initial P&L based on estimated fees. Once available, estimated fees automatically become actuals once available. Also provides an audit trail for all transactional information.
ISO Communications – Complete ISO portal for submitting operating parameters, energy, financial, and ancillary service bids & offers to ISO markets. Also retrieves dispatch messages, market awards, and settlement statements from the ISO with historical pricing for all nodes.
Physical Scheduling – Native e-Tagging and OASIS portal replacement allows for visibility to Day-Ahead and Real-Time energy and transmission positions. IAM’s energy scheduling integrates e-Tags and transmission reservations with transaction management to drive deal automation. Trade capture, inventory utilization, and e-Tag submittal are done in a few simple clicks.
Back Office Functionality – Includes counterparty credit management and checkout as well as Shadow Settlement for all ISOs. IAM’s shadow process includes the comparison of a shadow to any ISO settlement, and comparison of an ISO settlement to a settlement revision.
Position Management – The integration of transactions, schedules, and forecasts allows for the creation of both physical and financial positions for the term, day-ahead, and real-time windows.
Asset Management – Includes the storage of operating parameters, fuel types, fuel costs, I/O curves, and other unit-specific data. The system includes tools designed to assist or automate a wide variety of functions. Also includes a generation unit commit model, the auto-creation of bid/quantity pairs as well as a forecast building tool for the load.
Reporting – Offers a number of standard reports to recap transactions, fees, reservations, generation, and P&L, as well as extensive ad-hoc reporting capabilities in a variety of formats. Provides the ability to create dashboards, displays, and reports to ensure that users can create the reports they need in the format that best supports their workflow.
System Integration – Cost-effective integration with internal systems, as well as several standard interfaces to various ETRM solutions. Also fully integrated with MCG Energy’s entire Energy Software Suite, including MCG Energy’s Energy Accounting System, Gas module, and Risk solutions. This allows organizations to create integrated scheduling, ISO communication, trade capture, and risk management systems for both power and gas commodities.

Key Benefits of MCG’s Integrated Asset Management Software

Integrated solution that drives workflow enhancement and out of the box automation
Streamlined workflow with a single user interface for all market-related activities
Ability to manage all aspects of multiple power markets from just one application
Enhanced visibility into overall physical and financial position
Maximize asset portfolio P&L with better financial performance tracking
Flexible configuration allows MCG Energy experts to adapt the solution to your business needs
Scalable solution with the flexibility to expand as the markets evolve

IAM Shadow Settlement Functionality

As a fully-integrated wholesale energy marketing and trading solution with coverage across all North American power markets, IAM’s ISO Shadow Settlements enable customers to shadow and evaluate charges at the determinant level of granularity across all markets.

Key Features of IAM Shadow Settlement

IAM utilizes market rules and calculations to create the shadow from the data inside the system and compares it to data from the ISO settlement. IAM uses color formatting and “problem only” functionality to efficiently identify differences between the two independent sources of data.

Just as IAM allows the comparison of shadow data to ISO data for a given operating date, it also compares ISO settlement revisions. This function quickly identifies differences from one settlement to another all the way down to the market determinant level. The visibility of settlement revision differences allows an organization to plan for material affects to cash flow as well as explain differences to management.

Key Elements of the IAM Shadow Process

ISO Shadow Settlement process has four key elements:

Estimation – Allows an organization to perform pre-settlement reporting. Based on market rules, estimated determinant charges and calculations are configured in the system. When pre-settlements are run, IAM provides visible estimated financial results before ISO settlements have been published for that operating day.
Reconciliation – Occurs when the ISO publishes its settlements. Estimated market-wide determinants such as operating reserve rates, revenue sufficiency rates, and admin fees are replaced with the actual fees published by the ISO. Then a shadow settlement is created from IAM data and compared to the ISO settlement. Discrepancies can be investigated, and when necessary, disputes filed with the ISO. IAM provides the capability to create notes as well as file and manage disputes directly from the settlement comparison screen. Settlements can be marked “checked out” upon a satisfactory evaluation.
Allocation – Not all charges can be directly attributed to a specific operational or transactional event, making allocation necessary in managing ISO settlement. Charges such as revenue neutrality uplift need to be allocated to align with an organization’s needs and business plans. Successful completion of allocation allows an organization to analyze market trends and to report on market costs in a consistent manner.
Reporting – Reporting occurs at all stages of estimation, reconciliation, and allocation. Some reports are specific to a stage, others can be run at any point in the shadow process. Types of reports include financial as well as operational.

EIM Solution for Merchant Operations

Energy Imbalance Market (EIM) participants need tools to manage both new and legacy business requirements. MCG Energy’s suite of applications provides an elegant and robust solution designed to meet the demanding needs of EIM participants.

Alternative solutions only address a segment of requirements. Only MCG Energy’s EIM Market solution addresses all aspects of the EIM in a comprehensive, integrated manner. MCG Energy’s products, experience, and system implementation record makes MCG Energy’s solution for the EIM a wise management decision.

IAM is a comprehensive, integrated system for communication, as well as physical scheduling, trade capture, and asset management with the EIM. The system manages base schedule creation and submission, Bid/Offer/Parameter Submissions, Award retrieval, Shadow Settlements, and related reporting. IAM e-Tagging and transmission inventory management functionality is also used in physical scheduling. Assets including units, contracts, and load obligations are modeled in IAM to communicate with the market, and for internal analysis.

MCG Energy Accounting System (EAS) – Meter data management, and related calculations such as Net Scheduled Interchange and Net Actual Interchange, are performed in MCG EAS. Meter data submission to the market is a standard functionality of EAS, which is natively integrated with other MCG Energy applications, decreasing implementation risk and cost.
MCG Hosted Data Services (HDS) – Provides a user interface and programmatic access to the data created and received by all MCG Energy applications, and an efficient tool to run reports for large date ranges across multiple systems. The programmatic interface allows organizations to pull data as needed directly into internal systems with no direct involvement from MCG Energy. When hosted in MCG’s NIST SP 800-53 r4 complaint datacenters, HDS requires no table or hardware maintenance by the customer.

MCG Energy Solutions for the EIM

Base Schedule Data Creation

Allows the participating Resource Scheduling Coordinator to submit base schedule data, bid range data, and outage data for non-participating resources to the Entity Scheduling Coordinator for aggregation, and to forward to the market.

Data Management and Market Submission

Validation, Submission, and Reporting – Prior to submission, validation reports allow the participant to review base schedule data, positions, bids/offers, and reserve adequacy. Examples include EIM Resource Adequacy Validation and Operating Reserves Validation reports. Once validated, the system fulfills all required market submissions for the participant for both day-ahead and RTUC/RTD markets including base schedule data, unit parameters, interchange data, bids, offers, and capacity. Performance reports provide a review of overall generation and bid strategy performance and EIM market results by bringing together bid, cost, price, and settlement data in tabular and chart views. Examples include EIM Generation Performance and Imbalance and EIM Bid Strategy Performance reports.
Data Interfaces – Provide integration to both internal and market systems for data acquisition, and tight integration with MCG Energy systems.
Data Retention – All data for base schedules, outages, settlement, and submission (confirmation numbers, submission dates, status messages, etc.) are retained according to the customer’s compliance and accounting policies.

Asset Management

Bid Management – Allows the manual creation of participating resource schedules, bids, and offers. In addition, supports automatic, multi-tiered bid generation based on flexible, user-defined calculations at the resource level. Resource parameters from IAM’s Asset Management module can be used to define, save, and execute multiple bid strategies by resource or portfolio.
Position Management – Assists the operator in determining net position, potential imbalance, and scheduling workflow tracking. Positions are updated in real-time and utilize load forecasts, generation schedules, deals, tags, and meter data to provide the most up-to-date information possible.
Physical Scheduling – Fully integrates transactions, e-Tags and transmission reservation management. Deal automation functionality allows the user to create transactions, pull from transmission inventory, and submit tags with a few clicks of the mouse.

Settlements

The settlement subsystem pulls and displays settlements data from the EIM, and provides shadow calculations based on submitted data, accepted schedules, dispatches, and market prices. Multiple settlement statements can be aggregated for invoice reconciliation.

Meters and Calculations

Manages schedule and meter data from multiple data sources. Rollups and calculations allow for the visualization of your system as well as feeding internal billing systems. Meter data submission to the EIM can be performed manually or automated.