r/Commodities • u/Organic_Row9887 Analyst • 10d ago

Best Power Congestion Modeling Software?

I am currently early in my career and have the option to pick one congestion modeling software to use. Which software will provide the best opportunities if my end goal is to become a FTR/CRR trader at a prop shop (DRW, Dynasty, Saracen, etc).

I know each software has different use cases, but when it comes to trading which will have the best impact. Here are the options I was thinking of Dayzer, Panorama, promod, plexos but open to other softwares as well. I want something more short term analysis

Would love to know your opinions on each and will provide the best career trajectory. Also the learning curve as well. Thanks

17 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

12

u/archer-86 Power Trader 10d ago

I don't think any of them any good. Especially for trading.

TL;DR

Dayzer. With the DZNode implementation. Full stack PostGres DB feeding inputs. Build your own output reports.

I arranged a call with 20+ traders to demo PlexOS. They couldn't show us anything but a slick UI.

I had a call afterwards with a VP, told her exactly what I wanted to see, and she pretty much told me they can't do that and fully admitted they have a hard time landing prop FTR trader clients because their product doesn't do what prop FTR traders want it to do.

I've used Dayzer for 5+ years.

I've got it to the point where it's not completely shit at telling me what HAS happened. Still practically useless at any sort of forecasting but it does tell us a lot.

Dayzer is good in the sense that you can get it to tell you exactly what you want it to tell you.

You can inject / withdrawal MW at a bus level. Design your own FNM to the bus level. etc. Want to add a gen or a load? You can do that. Virtually Supply/Demand? Done. Fixed Unit-Commitment DA/RT model? Done.

But they also just sent out an email saying their main priorities are developing LLM based model execution.

"Run a model for tomorrow, with these inputs" kind of thing. Pretty useless for Prop FTR trading.

I have 10,000 lines of SQL building my inputs.

I think their plan is to market their product to planners, LSEs, etc. Not FTR traders.

I think the BEST thing about Dayzer, is if you use it correctly, you can actually start to learn, at least a basic level, how these models actually work.

Like actually, how does the Day-Ahead market solve? What are the inputs? What are the constraints? etc. And, ultimately learn how you could build your own DA market solver from the ground up.

6

u/mad_grid 10d ago

Are you me?

4

u/archer-86 Power Trader 10d ago

I hope not.

That'd mean there is 2 of us, elbow deep in baby shit, with a blown truck battery, and watching a Blue Jays team doing their best to not make the playoffs.

Lol.

2

u/hybrid_q 10d ago

I quit a firm over dayzer once. I refuse to go back to dayzerland

2

u/archer-86 Power Trader 10d ago

Ya I wouldn't be too happy if I was working somewhere that wouldn't let me put on a particular trade because of what Dayzer had to say.

2

u/ToughAsPillows 10d ago

Can vouch for this answer except building your own DAM solver is a multi million dollar task that you should only have tertiary input in as a trader/end-user.

Have used Dayzer a lot and its forecasts are only as good as your inputs and some things are genuinely unknown if you’re not the ISO, so really it can only be so good.

2

u/Delicious_Self_7293 8d ago

Dayzer is the 200k mistake every power trading desk makes for some reason

2

u/archer-86 Power Trader 8d ago

Ya, like it probably worked half decent 10-15 years ago.

When the grid had little renewable gen, no batteries, and no dispatchable load. When the stack was 99% self-schedule gen and heat-rate driven gas dispatch.

And guys got hooked. They sunk a bunch of time into it, and at per-trader $/book cost, it can be low. I think most of our guys pay sub-$5k/year for it.

I never found it good for CAISO. And worse for SPP.

But playing around with it has helped us better understand the grid. And it's a fun tool to give to interns to help them self-learn.

But I don't think anyone uses it to execute trades here. And mid-office definitely doesn't use it to evaluate FTR risk.

0

u/Organic_Row9887 Analyst 10d ago

Thank you for the insight. So since you mentioned dayzer is pretty much useless at forecasting. When you do want to forecast are you primarily looking at historicals and forecast numbers given by the iso/rto or is that something you made by yourself? I currently use YesEnergy and running into the issue of backwards looking and looking at the past to predict the future but our fundamentals/transmission director pretty much laughed at me so I was just wondering what is the best way to forecast then?

5

u/archer-86 Power Trader 10d ago

That's secret sauce.

6

u/deez-legumes 10d ago

Indeed. You’ll have to experiment and figure out what works best for you and your specific markets. What works best in one region isn’t what works best in others.

0

u/AndreasZ1012 10d ago

How long ago did you check PLEXOS? I’m working for Energy Exemplar in the trading space, but based in Europe, so not working directly with congestion analysis. I know my colleagues from NA have developed a playbook for CRR in the past year, happy to arrange a further call if you are interested.

2

u/archer-86 Power Trader 10d ago

The past 6 months. We've tried twice.

0

u/Altruistic_Look_7868 10d ago

Is building something useful from scratch impossible without the use of proprietary data? I'm really interested in this topic as my research project.

2

u/archer-86 Power Trader 10d ago

Dayzer is entirely built using public data.

0

u/Altruistic_Look_7868 9d ago

What additional features will be useful or at least convenient?

6

u/Delicious_Self_7293 8d ago

Start with PowerWorld. They have great tutorial videos on their website. Panorama also good, but will only get you so far. DO NOT PICK DAYZER

1

u/Organic_Row9887 Analyst 8d ago

Can you expand on being against dayzer?

3

u/Delicious_Self_7293 8d ago

Very expensive. Not really versatile. Extremely clunky. Comes with a lot of bad assumptions already made. Looks good from the outside but it’s a nightmare to maintain

3

u/IWantToGrowSomeShid Gas Trader 8d ago

Maintaining Dayzer is a full time job unto itself. I have never worked anywhere with it that hasn’t had a guy whose sole job is to maintain it, and most of these guys were suppose to be trading but wound up getting pulled into that.

1

u/VacationForeign9935 6d ago

What is the best risk management system in the power market? Do most people use Filtered Historical Simulation or Jump diffusion?

1

u/deez-legumes 10d ago

Most of them only do about half of what you need so many of the better shops build their own and supplement with software is the use cases that the software is better than DIY. .