In this section ECCO International describes how we can effectively and successfully meet your needs by providing our subject matter expertise to assist you with your preparations for the MRTU deployment by the CAISO.

Meeting YOUR Needs
ECCO International and its assembled team of professionals is one of the most experienced teams in the industry today in terms of energy market design, especially LMP based energy market design, power systems, and innovative software solutions to support competitive markets. As a group we have led major market design efforts worldwide. We possess a track record supporting our claim that we are responsive to the needs and requirements of our clients and have the references to back up our claim.

ECCO's principals have an unparalleled and intimate knowledge of the California Energy Market, of which the recent changes associated with the CAISO's Market Redesign and Technology Update (MRTU) are most immediately applicable to your needs and we will use this in-depth background in our application and service to you.

To briefly summarize, the ECCO Internationals consultants offer the following capabilities that collectively, we believe, provide the key differentiators and set us apart from our competitors:

• A unique and highly qualified team comprised of very experienced personnel with international reputation and world-renowned expertise.
• An intimate knowledge of the California Energy market based on our past and current experience which is directly applicable to the direction your company may be taking for its own Market Redesign effort.
• Commitment to successfully completing your project needs as we have done for all of our clients.

ECCO International is pleased to offer present its list of key subject matter experts. These key staff members would be assigned as required to oversee the entire project from start to completion depending upon the specific contractual requirements.

Dr. Alex Papalexopoulos
President and Founder of ECCO International - has global electric power system knowledge and invaluable regional, practical experience. Dr. Papalexopoulos remains abreast of the latest developments in the electric power industry and participates in numerous forums with leading organizations that are critical in creating market design decisions and developing technology solutions. Dr. Papalexopoulos has an extensive background in power systems design, simulation, analysis and computational techniques with specialization in grid, transmission and merchant functions, pricing, energy market design, ancillary services, congestion management, competitive bidding, power systems operations, power generation, transmission planning, transmission and power contracts, system dynamics, real time control and implementation of EMS advanced applications and forecasting in a utility environment. Most recently Dr. Papalexopoulos was the Program Lead in charge of the entire technical aspect of the CAISO MRTU Project relating to tariff development, energy market design, business rules development, requirement development, functional specifications, detailed design specifications, RFP development, software support development, unit testing, pre-FAT, FAT and SAT.

Dr. George Angelidis
Principal Consultant, Dr. Angelidis possesses a solid technical background in power systems engineering and has extensive research in power system analysis, control, and optimization. Dr. Angelidis has excellent analytical skills and problem-solving abilities with over twenty-one (21) years of computing experience. He has expertise in electricity market design and an acquired knowledge and experience through the definition, design, implementation, testing, and operation of the California electricity market. Dr. Angelidis has in-depth knowledge and understanding of the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) scheduling and settlement systems.

Dr. Khaled Abdul-Rahman
Managing Principal Consultant, offers a high caliber consulting services developed over 16 years of extensive experience in a variety of applications related to Power Systems operations, planning, and electricity markets. Dr. Abdul-Rahman's deep knowledge of the electrical power industry restructuring coupled with his advanced technical and analytical skills, information technology experience and his management and personal skills make him an perfect fit for key roles in management, implementation, testing, and timely deployment of software projects related to critical aspects of the electric power system industry.

Mr. Rod Frowd
Principal Consultant has been with ECCO International since 2000 and has over twenty-nine (29) years experience in advanced power system analysis development for power system operation, control and planning, with particular specialization in developing and testing complex generation scheduling applications. He has been active in many modeling and analysis projects for the deregulated industry, including ancillary services dispatch, bid price modeling, and most recently a Must Offer Unit Commitment application using Mixed Integer Processing. Mr. Frowd has extensive software development and programming experience in energy market implementations around the world. He is a renowned expert in implementing Mixed Integer Programming-based Security Constrained Unit Commitment (SCUC) software which forms the basic optimization technology for clearing centrally coordinated ISO markets.

Mr. Zhou Li
Principal Consultant has been with ECCO International since 2003 and with fifteen (15) years in software project development has given Mr. Li excellent expertise in J2EE, SOA, UNIX, distributed applications, workflow, transaction management, and software development process. Mr. Li's initial focus at all engagements is to ensure the proper tools and processes are established for proper software development, release, and maintenance. With extensive experience as a Management Systems Architect, EMS/NMS Architect, and as a Senior Software Engineer, Mr. Li is a proven leader with a zeal and talent for defining architectures and strategically positioning technologies to meet corporate goals. Mr. Li's ability to acquire, and master, new technologies and methodologies is matched only by his skill to successfully deploy them. This breadth and depth of technical expertise has proven capable of solving some of the most challenging service requirements such as client tool kits, 100% availability and real time performance systems: Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) integration deployment and distributed mediated services. Mr. Li skillfully demonstrates his years of experience in enterprise scale deployments of application architecture, SOA, and Network Management Systems. Mr. Li follows industry trends and is able to successfully choose emerging technologies and apply them to meet architecture requirements.

Mr. David F Perrino
Vice President has been with ECCO International since 2002 and has thirty (30) years of electric utility experience primarily in the operation of large-scale bulk power systems managing power system and market operations. He has considerable experience analyzing policy as it applies to operations and business impacts along with policy advocacy. Along with his significant experience managing power system and market operations, Mr. Perrino has been responsible for and has successfully managed, coordinating and filing interventions and comments with the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and State Public Utility Commissions related to various tariff filings within the US. In addition Mr. Perrino is also experienced in leading development and implementation of software projects. Mr. Perrino has an extensive track record of getting tasks completed on time and within budgetary constraints. Most recently Mr. Perrino was the Project Lead associated with developing and implementing the Graphic User Interface requirements associated with the CAISO MRTU Project for the Real-Time, Day-Ahead as well as the Reporting functions for MRTU. Mr. Perrino also played additional support roles in developing software user guides, Residual Unit Commitment (RUC) design and drafting of new supporting Tariff language associated with MRTU.

Mr. Brian Simmons
Principal Consultant has over twelve (13) years of information technology experience including seven (8) years of RTO/ISO and energy deregulation experience. Mr. Simmons has been a Senior Project Manager with systems integration experience which has been gained through managing the delivery of complex information technology projects. With his extensive knowledge of system development methods and best practices, he has led multiple project teams through the complete systems development life cycle. Mr. Simmons has managed large multi-cultural teams, interfaced with executives at all levels of an organization, and has Big 5 consulting experience. Mr. Simmons functional background includes Transmission Rights (FTR's, TCC's and CRR's) auctions, financial reporting, settlements, and billing systems. Mr. Simmons possesses a technical background which also includes ERP implementations, workflow management systems, enterprise reporting, document management systems, and middleware.

Mr. Mohammad Al-Baijat
Principal Consultant has a solid Education and over 12 years working experience in power systems including, design, implementation, testing and maintaining power system market applications (Ancillary Services, Congestion Management, and Real time applications. Mr. Al-Baijat also has experience working with network powers system applications EMS applications (Power Flow, Optimal Power Flow, Contingency Analysis, State Estimation, DTS etc) and Network Scheduling Applications (Unit Commitments with Transmission Constraints and Different type of constraints). In his career he has worked for more than 8 years in several different deregulation projects (CAISO, NYISO, IESO, KPX). Mr. Al-Baijat has proven experience in project management and execution.

Ms. Kristen Kelley
Principal Consultant has eighteen (18) years of consulting experience in the electric utility industry with six years of California Independent System Operator (ISO) experience in software and market design implementation. Ms. Kelley possesses an exceptional background in managing mission critical projects. Most recently her assignment placed her as the Project Manager in charge of the new market system development (from design to site acceptance testing) for CAISO's Market Redesign and Technology Upgrade program. Additionally, Ms. Kelley's experience spans the breadth of the electric utility industry and will provide outstanding management skills and best practices to accomplish project goals for any assignment awarded to ECCO International.

Dr. Manochehr Eghtesadi
Principal Consultant, Dr. Eghtesadi is an expert in the field with over twenty (20) years of experience. The two state estimation programs he developed based on the NE/C and Orthogonal transformation algorithms for Landis & Gyr (now part of Siemens PT&D) have been utilized by many transmission operation centers around the world. Main users include BC-Hydro, TVA, TenneT (operator of Netherlands's national grid), Western Resources (WRI), Mid-American Energy (MEC), and Southwest Public Service (SPS). Moreover, Dr. Eghtesadi has been providing consulting services in state estimation algorithm development (AREVA, PSI, and Siemens), model development for state estimation (PG&E, CAISO, Entergy, BCHydro), observability analysis for meter-placement (PG&E, TVA), closed-loop voltage/var scheduler (SCE, Czech-republic), algorithm and software development to account for cascading effects (secondary contingencies and Remedial Action Schemes) in Contingency Analysis (Siemens, TenneT).

Mr. Hani Alarian
Principal Consultant has over twenty (20) years of EMS related experience gained through working in various capacities at Illinois Power, from electrical engineer to senior manager of the EMS group. He is NERC Certified Operator RC and was the director of generation control at IP when he left. Mr. Alarian was the Chairman for MAIN for the Control Area Certification Committee. The insights and expertise that Mr. Alarian can offer to SMUD will be invaluable. More than 10 years of those were spent in leading and managing engineers and programmers that created the best EMS built winning the Computer World Smithsonian Award Finalist for 2000. Mr. Alarian is able to create a synergy with his team by making everyone reach their full potential and expanding their knowledge and abilities to go beyond just doing their job.

Expertise
To provide to you with more insight to the depth of knowledge our subject matter experts possess regarding MRTU, below is an explanation of work that we have successfully delivered to the CAISO.

California Independent System Operator (CAISO) - ECCO International was a lead consultant in the Market Design 2002 (MD02) and subsequently the Market Redesign and Technology Upgrade (MRTU) projects. In MD02, we designed the congestion revenue right allocation and auction process and the real-time market consisting of multi-interval security constrained unit commitment (SCUC) and security constrained economic dispatch (SCED). We conducted numerous simulation studies, and developed load aggregation concepts, pricing rules, and settlement procedures and formulae for forward and real-time markets and cost allocation mechanisms. In MRTU, we produced the software requirement specifications and business rules for the Integrated Forward Market (IFM) for energy and ancillary services, the Residual Unit Commitment (RUC) for reliability purposes, the Real Time Market (RTM), and the Market Power Mitigation (MPM) procedures. Each of these software applications described above will migrate the existing congestion management scheme from a zonal model to a significantly more complex nodal/branch paradigm using constraints derived from a full Alternating Current Optimal Power Flow (AC-OPF) significantly adding accuracy to the algorithmic solution reducing the need for manual intervention in the administration of both the Day-Ahead and Real-Time markets. Also from a project perspective we were responsible for the review of the design document specifications from the software vendor to assure their compliance with the requirements, we wrote test cases and prepared test data, and successfully performed pre- Factory Acceptance Testing, Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT) of all market applications currently under the MRTU Project. We have recently successfully completed the Site Acceptance Test (SAT) for the baseline functionality of both the Forward and Real-Time Markets under MRTU. We completed the process of conducting knowledge transfer from our professional staff to the CAISO full-time employees (FTEs). In parallel, ECCO International also had staff members providing assistance in writing both tariff and training material as well as guidance for software integration via service-oriented architecture. Finally, we have provided additional expertise to policy makers at the CAISO on formulating new policies regarding implementation of resource adequacy requirements and many other elements of the evolving electricity markets in California.

Conclusion
As we have demonstrated ECCO International has been an integral part of the initial and evolving market development within the CAISO. We have shown that we have extensive experience associated with:

• Day-Ahead Markets,
• Real-Time Markets,
• Ancillary Services, and
• Transmission Rights and Congestion Management markets, and
• Settlement Systems and cost allocation mechanisms.

As a result of our comprehensive and all encompassing involvement in the CAISO MRTU project we can offer to you an expertise no other professional staff can claim. Our experience will significantly benefit any implementation project you may be considering as part of your preparedness plan relating to MRTU and offer savings in terms of minimum ramp-up time, shorter development times and increased opportunity for success.

ECCO International has consistently and successfully delivered to our clients, the knowledge and expertise that is essential in implementing complex electricity markets. Our professional staff has a depth and breadth of experience second to none in our industry when it comes to understanding, specifying and delivering complex energy market solutions as we have demonstrated in the paragraphs above.