ISO Express is live! Check out the new market and power system data site
Friday, December 23, 2011 at 8:57AM 
ISO New England is pleased to present ISO Express, the newly redesigned neData Portal. ISO Express offers a quick, customizable, one-stop-shop for graphical views of real-time market and power system data and provides better web-based alerting features in emergency situations.
You can access ISO Express from the iso-ne.com homepage, under AT A GLANCE. Please note that the old neData Portal is no longer available and the LMP map is accessible only through ISO Express.
How to Best View ISO Express
You will get the best performance by viewing ISO Express in 1280x1024 resolution or higher. The best browser options are Firefox 3.1 or higher or Internet Explorer 9 or higher. If using Internet Explorer 8 or older, you must download the Google Chrome Frame plug-in to ensure optimal performance. We do not support browsers or versions of browsers not mentioned here.
Site Registration
ISO Express offers a guest view that allows you to use the site without logging in. However, you won’t be able to save any of the customization changes you make. To take advantage of the ability to save your unique customized formatting of the views and data, you will need to register and then login at each visit. Note that if you registered for ISO Express in the sandbox environment, you will need to re-register and recreate your changes now that the site is live.
Web Services/Data Feeds
In addition, ISO New England is offering web services, or data feeds, of some of its public data through ISO Express. These services/feeds are used by market participants’ IT programmers to set up their own applications based on ISO data. Previously, the ISO offered data in CSV format only. Now, in addition, we are offering RESTFul web services that will provide data in XML and JSON formats. XML is more readable than CSV and provides several other advantages. For example, XML separates the presentation of data from the structure of that data. And you can easily provide contracts (as XSD) to other parties that should either create/consume XML data, without literally describing them.
To access the data feeds, you must register for ISO Express. After registering, ask your Customer & Asset Management System (CAMS) Administrator to add your contact information to CAMS as a Web Services Contact. Again, if you registered for the feeds in sandbox, you will need to re-register now that the site is live. The ISO’s IT department has created documentation that provides a full list of available web services and describes the process for accessing the services. See the ISO New England Web Services API documentation.
Feedback and Demo
Join the ISO’s web team for an hour-long WebEx demonstration of ISO Express on January 4, 2012. Experts will be on hand to answer questions about the new site and web services. Sign up through ISO-TEN.
ISO New England is committed to quality and continuous improvement in delivering information. As the industry becomes more complex, it is important that we remain able to meet the information needs and expectations of our stakeholders. Therefore, the company is very excited to offer these web advancements to the New England region. The ISO’s web team is always interested in your feedback. Please send any comments or questions to the Web Content Manager. The ISO’s web team can begin evaluating the feasibility and scope of feedback to plan future enhancements.
About the Portal
In 2002, ISO New England created the neData Portal—a subsection of its public website where market participants and other electricity-industry stakeholders in New England could access and monitor real-time market and power system data. The design and function of the portal remained largely untouched since that time; whereas, technology advanced significantly.
The Redesign
The ISO kicked off the portal redesign project earlier this year in response to an extensive analysis in 2010 that found ways the ISO could improve how it delivers data and information through the web. The redesign is based on feedback from current users of the portal and stakeholders who could benefit from using the portal once enhanced. Basically, with the new site, you can monitor the New England power system while watching graphs of data set up by you—all in a simple, clean, easy-to-read interface.
To create your own unique view, you can select and customize “dashboards” of information. Available data include charts and graphs of five-minute real-time LMPs, hourly real-time LMPs, weekly and monthly day-ahead and real-time LMPs, reserve prices, load forecast, system load, external interfaces, hourly day-ahead and real-time LMP price ticker, and more.
In addition, you can easily expand and minimize a newly redesigned System Monitor that enables instantaneous viewing of power system conditions (including OP 4 alerts), an interactive LMP map that includes binding constraints, and a graph that shows forecasted and actual system load.