SPD stands for Scheduling, Pricing and Dispatch and is the name of the model used to run the New Zealand wholesale electricity market. See also Part 13 of the Code for the rules describing how scheduling, pricing, and dispatch actually works.
The Authority receives from the system operator all SPD case files from which published prices are derived. An SPD case file contains all of the inputs required for that case and all of the outputs generated by SPD for that case. From 1 November 2022, real-time dispatch case files can be found here. Prior to the advent of real-time pricing, final pricing case files were published and can be found here.
The remainder of this discussion explains the naming convention used with SPD case files. A case file is a zipped collection of text files.
Naming convention for SPD case files
The naming format for an SPD case file is MSS_DDCCCYYYYMMHHHHNNN_0X.ZIP where:
- DD denotes the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) day number for the trading day. This is not zero padded so for the first nine days of the month this is a single digit.
- CCC denotes the case type where:
- 120 denotes the WDS – weekly dispatch schedule
- 131 denotes the PRSL – long price-responsive schedule
- 130 denotes the PRSS – short price-responsive schedule
- 133 denotes the NRSL – long non-response schedule
- 132 denotes the NRSS – short non-response schedule
- 101 denotes the RTD – real-time dispatch schedule
- 110 denotes the RTP – real-time pricing schedule (following the the introduction of real-time pricing on 1 November 2022, RTP cases ceased to exist)
- 111 denotes the FP – final pricing schedule (following the the introduction of real-time pricing on 1 November 2022, FP cases ceased to exist)
- YYYY denotes the UTC year
- MM denotes the UTC month. This is zero padded so is always two digits
- HHHH denotes the UTC 24-hour time for the first trading period that the case is solved for
- NNN denotes three random digits and can be used to distinguish multiple instances of a particular case.
Finally, see also our discussion on GDX files for use with vSPD.
