Throughout December last year to February this year, stakeholders of the National Electricity Market of Singapore (NEMS), including market participants (MPs), SP Services, the Power System Operator (PSO) and EMC, were consulted on the annual Rules Change Panel (RCP) work plan prioritisation exercise.
Issue identification
The first stage of the prioritisation exercise involved seeking inputs for new issues which stakeholders wished to address. The following twelve new issues were raised for inclusion in the updated work plan:
1. Provision under Automatic Financial Penalty Scheme (AFPS) to exempt any Generation Registered Facility (GRF) on local control that deviated from its scheduled load due to frequency response (Proposed by: PacificLight Power);
2. Review of the gate closure exemptions (Proposed by: EMC);
3. Basing the Demand Response bid price floor on an average pricing benchmark derived from recent two weeks’ Uniform Singapore Energy Price (USEP) data (Proposed by: Crystal Clear Environmental);
4. To revise the frequency on the publication of the daily 14-days Adequacy and Security Assessment (ASA) reports to a weekly ASA reports (Proposed by: PSO);
5. Reevaluating the regulation requirements in Singapore's power system: the impact of intermittent generation and solar energy (Proposed by: Sembcorp Cogen);
6. Review of the market’s regulation requirement (Proposed by: Senoko Energy);
7. Review of regulation requirement in response to increased pulsing of GRFs arising from solar intermittency (Proposed by: YTL PowerSeraya);
8. Optimising Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) participation in the regulation market: a proposal for split regulation categories (Proposed by: Sembcorp Cogen);
9. Review Reserve Responsibility Share (RRS) calculation (Proposed by: Senoko Energy);
10. Publishing of electricity import data split into categories based on how “green” the electricity import is (Proposed by: Tuas Power Generation);
11. Increasing offered quantity within gate closure due to technical constraints (Proposed by: Senoko Energy); and
12. Allow representation in voting for RCP members who are unable to attend RCP meetings (Proposed by: YTL PowerSeraya).
At the second stage of the prioritisation exercise, EMC conducted joint briefing sessions with stakeholders to clarify existing and new issues. Stakeholders also ranked each issue according to its importance and urgency, and/or voted for issues to be removed.
Updated RCP Work Plan from April 2025 to March 2026
EMC presented the updated one-year work plan to the RCP for consideration at its 146th meeting in March after incorporating feedback from all stakeholders.
After further deliberation, the RCP agreed to refer five issues to the EMA, had no objections to the removal of seven issues from the RCP work plan and agreed to work on the following issues within the next 12 months:
1. Holistic review of the current prudential requirement obligations and its enforcement process under the Market Rules. Review sufficiency of credit support taking into account price volatility;
2. Holistic review of the Market Rules related to cessation of business, liquidation, and insolvency;
3. Review of scope and framework for compensation arising from complying with PSO issuing overriding dispatch instructions;
4. Facilitating integration of large-scale imports into the market;
5. Review of rules governing participation and offers for batteries and distributed energy resources;
6. Publication of other Temporary Price Cap (TPC) information;
7. Review of obligation to act within five minutes when an action is to be taken “promptly” or “immediately”;
8. Exemption from gate closure rules for cancelled synchronisation;
9. Load forecasting and market clearing engine (MCE) dispatch and price determination when contracted fast start unit(s) is performing monthly test or when actual activation;
10. Review Reserve Responsibility Share (RRS) calculation;
11. Exclude provisional prices from TPC Moving Average Price (MAP) calculation; and
12. Provision under AFPS to exempt any GRF on local control that deviated from its scheduled load due to frequency response.
Detailed descriptions of all issues can be found on EMC’s website.
