Help Prevent Your Trades from Being Rejected by ISOs

With the ISOs’ varied rules for trade submissions, the smallest oversight can cause your trade submissions to be rejected. The following are the most common reasons why ISOs reject your Virtual and Spread trades.

Submitting Invalid or De-energized Nodes

Most ISOs publish a list of valid and de-energized nodes. Submitting a node that isn’t on the valid node list or is on the de-energized list can potentially result in your entire portfolio being rejected (CAISO, SPP, and PJM will reject your entire portfolio if one node is invalid).

Minimum MW Volume and Decimal Places on Bids and MWs

ERCOT and CAISO require a volume of at least 1MW on their Virtual transactions. All ISOs except SPP and CAISO require less than 1 decimal place on the MW volume (CAISO is less than 2 and SPP is less than 3). If one of your bids doesn’t fit into the specific ISO rules the ISO could potentially reject your entire submission. 

Bid Caps and Floors

It’s not common for traders to put in bids above the price cap or below the price floor, but occasionally a trader may “fat finger” a price or volume, and inadvertently add an extra zero. This can also lead to your submission becoming rejected.

Tranche Count

The number of tranches (or number of bid curves) allowed per ISO varies dramatically. NYISO allows for 3 and NEISO allows for 50. Your submission can be rejected if you submit outside of these ISO-specific thresholds.

CAISO On Peak / Off Peak Node

Peak Type-specific nodes are unique to CAISO Virtuals (Convergence Bids). If you attempt to submit a Peak Type-specific node for the wrong peak type hour, CAISO will reject your submission. 

Wash Trades

“Wash Trades” on Virtuals are when you submit bids that are higher than your offer price on the same node for the same hour. While most ISOs won’t invalidate these types of submissions, you want to avoid this sort of behavior as it’s deemed illegal by Section 222 of the FERC’s Anti-Manipulation Rule. 

Validating your trades ahead of submission can help prevent your trades from getting rejected. Yes Energy® built validations into the Submission Service™ workflow, so that potential errors are flagged before submission.

Invalid and De-energized Nodes: Yes Energy collects the list of valid and de-energized nodes and automatically validates your portfolio prior to submission.

Minimum MW Volume and Decimal Places on Bids and MWs: Yes Energy has validation built in to match each ISO’s specific requirements to help prevent trades from getting rejected due to incorrect decimal places.

Bid Caps and Floors: The validation integrated into Submission Services will alert you if your bid is outside each ISOs particular price cap or floor. Additionally, as the ISO’s adjust these, they will be updated in the tool as well.

Tranche Count: The tool has validation built in to warn you if the number of tranches (or bid curves) are falling outside of those ISO-specific thresholds.

CAISO On Peak / Off Peak Node: Traders can struggle with getting this right, so Submission Services includes additional validation to warn you if you are submitting an On-Peak node for an Off-Peak Hour (or vice-versa).

Wash Trades: The tool will warn you on each side of the transaction if it detects Wash Trades.

There are several reasons why ISOs could reject your submission, which can jeopardize your trades from making it into the ISO portals. Take advantage of Yes Energy's Submission Services to catch these issues up-front, so you can submit your trades with confidence and know they'll be accepted. To learn more, please visit the Submission Services product page for details. 

To learn more about Yes Energy’s Submission Services, schedule a demo!