ISLAMABAD: National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) has rescheduled public hearing on final test run report for the long-awaited Competitive Trading Bilateral Contract Market (CTBCM) for May 30, 2024 (tomorrow), due to announcement of May 28 as national public holiday.

According to NEPRA’s spokesperson, Masroor Khan, all stakeholders, the general public and interested / affected parties have been informed that the public hearing has been rescheduled.

The test-run phase allowed market participants to review and evaluate the output data reports, generated from MMS, in relation to their operational and commercial needs. This hands-on experience and knowledge gained will enable them to participate in the competitive wholesale market and make informed decisions when financial implications are put into effect after the launch of the CTBCM.

NEPRA had granted Market Operator (MO) license to Central Power Purchasing Agency Guarantee Ltd. (CPPA-G) vide a determination dated May 31st, 2022. The Authority approved the Market Commercial Code for test-run during the soft launch of the Market and a test-run plan. The test-run plan had various actions to be performed by relevant power sector entities.

Further, NEPRA assigned to CPPA-G the role of central coordinator / facilitator for implementation of the test-run plan which was monitored on a bi-weekly basis by NEPRA. Moreover, the Authority also directed CPPA to furnish monthly and final test run reports.

The test run phase of the CTBCM was defined as the pre phase before CTBCM goes live. The test-run phase – also sometimes referred to as “trial run”, “dry run” or “parallel run”– was aimed to simulate the CTBCM transactions under “actual and real conditions” without imposing any financial obligations on the market participants and to test all IT systems, applications and software in real time scenarios.

In the test run phase, the readiness of relevant power sector entities to provide data inputs for the Market Management System (MMS) and other related IT systems was carried out. In this phase, the market participants were made aware of the MMS data requirements and processes, and they successfully completed their internal IT and operational changes to accommodate the new system and its associated procedures. Specifically, this phase also ensured that the power sector entities undergo thorough exercise of relaying and processing the relevant data sets as required.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024