REPORT TO COUNCIL
SUBJECT
Title
Action on an Agreement for Services with Vicki Vanderburg, Inc. dba Power Systems Operations (PSO) for Software License Update and Maintenance of the Validate, Estimate, Reconcile, Allocate (VERA) Settlements Software and Provision of Cloud Hosting [Council Pillar: Deliver and Enhance High Quality Efficient Services and Infrastructure]
Report
BACKGROUND
The City of Santa Clara's Electric Utility Department, dba Silicon Valley Power (SVP), uses the Validate, Estimate, Reconcile, Allocate (VERA) Settlements software applications for its Power Trading Division's settlement of transactions that takes place in the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) wholesale market. These settlements are complicated, and dependent on a number of variables that are adjusted over time causing the need to perform adjusted settlements that go back months and years in time. In any given CAISO invoice there will be the current month's settlement as well as 6 additional monthly adjustments from prior time periods.
The VERA software was designed and written by Power Systems Operations (PSO) for the purpose of validating the CAISO settlements scheduled through Silicon Valley Power's Scheduling Coordinator Agreement with Northern California Power Agency (NCPA) and for various industry reporting requirements. Approximately $69 million in transactions which were scheduled through the CAISO were validated and settled in CY2019.
Various VERA modules hold all the algorithms/formulas for calculating settlements, there are 235 California Independent System Operator (CAISO) charge code formulas for settling transactions using the CAISO grid. SVP submits around 82,860 schedules per year. These schedules generate 24 settlements per schedule if they are in the CAISO Day Ahead market, or 268 settlements per schedule, if in the CAISO Real-Time market, amounting to millions of settlement interval calculations that must be validated such that invoices can...
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