UI is a Participant in the New England Power Pool (NEPOOL) which is a voluntary association of electric utilities and other companies that participate in the competitive wholesale electricity marketplace in New England. NEPOOL established a single regional network in 1971 to direct the operations of the major generating and transmission (bulk power system) facilities in the region. ISO New England Inc. (ISO-NE) was established as a not-for-profit, private corporation in 1997 following its approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). ISO-NE has a services contract with NEPOOL with the responsibility for the management of the NEPOOL bulk power generation and transmission systems and administration of the region's open access transmission tariff. One of ISO-NE's functions is to operate an hourly energy market settlement process.

UI as a Participant in NEPOOL and as the Assigned Meter Reader for Load in its service territory (ISO-NE Node #12) must provide meter readings (whether actual or estimated through profiling) to ISO-NE by 1300 on the second business day after the Scheduled Dispatch Period to facilitate the ISO-NE settlement process. For more information and to review specific market rules and procedures, please use the links to NEPOOL, ISO-NE and FERC.

UI utilizes industry recognized settlement software to develop the estimated asset meter readings for reporting to ISO-NE. The process of developing the estimated meter readings and reconciling them to actual metering readings is called Load Settlement.

The UI Load Settlement process utilizes the following data to develop the hourly load information reported to ISO-NE: the day being settled system load ('nodal load'), current customer usage data, historical system load data, historical Load Profile Segment shapes. UI's Customer Information System (CIS) is the source for usage data on individual customers. CIS usage data is updated following each customer meter reading cycle. Through industry standard statistical load research and profiling methods, UI has developed load shapes by rate segment for each historical system load day used in Load Settlement. The software used in the daily load settlement process utilizes average hourly load shapes. These load shapes are also referred to as average Load Profile Segment shapes. UI currently uses 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 system load and average segment shape data in its settlement process.

UI uses the Proxy Day method of choosing Segment Shapes for the day of interest in Load Settlement. The Proxy Day method selects the historical system load day with the minimum difference to the system load of the day being settled. The process of choosing the historical day is based on the minimum of the sum of the absolute value of the hourly differences. The Proxy Day method presumes that by selecting a day with a like system load shape to the day of estimation, weather and other variables have been implicitly considered. The corresponding Load Profile Segment shapes for the historical system load day (Proxy Day) are used in the settlement process.

If you have questions about UI's process of Load Settlement please e-mail Jim Michaud at supplier.relations@uinet.com