Jordan Garcia briefed the Los Alamos Department of Public Utilities board on the extended day-ahead market (EDAM) and what it means for local operations. "EDAM will be required to participate; Los Alamos will be required to participate in the EDAM market, with PNM's entry," Garcia said, summarizing where the regional process stands.

Garcia described EDAM as an optimization engine that extends day-ahead scheduling and centrally dispatches the cheapest available resources while accounting for transmission constraints, congestion and losses. He said the market will move Los Alamos from settlement via PNM to direct billing and settlement with CAISO, and that participation will require new front- and back-office interfaces and, for some resources, specialized equipment such as automated generator controls.

Key operational changes Garcia flagged included a resource efficiency evaluation (RSE) that will increase day-ahead planning obligations. "The calculation for RSE is load plus imbalance reserves plus ancillary services," he said, noting that deficiencies could result in penalties and additional purchases from the market. He also described bidding options available to participants (biddable resources, self-schedule, or outages) and explained locational marginal pricing is composed of energy, congestion and loss components.

On environmental accounting and market signals, Garcia said market participants can include attribute "adders" for green resources when bidding and that many variable resources currently bid at near-zero prices because of tax credits such as ITC or PTC. Board members asked whether EDAM's economic dispatch could favor low-cost but higher-emissions resources; Garcia said adders and bidding strategies provide a mechanism to value attributes but that the market primarily optimizes cost while offering tools to reflect policy preferences.

Garcia and staff outlined an implementation timeline that puts Pacificorp in EDAM around 2026 and Public Service Company of New Mexico / PNM and other entities toward 2027, with additional western utilities potentially joining in 2028. Staff emphasized the program will require continued planning: revising integrated resource planning to account for RSE, updating metering and settlement systems, and deciding whether to host functions internally or outsource third-party settlements and front/back-office work.

Board members expressed concern about the administrative burden and the distribution of costs and benefits; Garcia said administrative charges will be unbundled from PNM and some administrative costs will be new but likely not large relative to operational and systems upgrades, which will vary by resource mix. Garcia recommended the utility consider software and staffing needs well ahead of local balancing-area entries into EDAM.