The process for submission of bids is described in Section V.10 of the Fall 2023 Block Energy and Capacity RFP Rules and is summarized below:

A “Bid” for a Capacity Product includes a price, in $/MW-day, for at least one ZRC for a given Season of a Planning Year for which ZRCs are procured. A Bid also includes the number of ZRCs to which the price applies and the Source Zone of the ZRCs. The price in the Bid is the price that the Bidder is willing to accept to deliver to AIC for the given Season and Planning Year the quantity of ZRCs from the Source Zone specified in the Bid. A Bidder may bid on any number of ZRCs for a Season of a Planning Year up to and including the ZRC Target for that Season and Planning Year. If a Bidder bids on more ZRCs than the ZRC Target for a Season and Planning Year, the higher priced Bids will be discarded and the number of Bids considered in the evaluation will not exceed the ZRC Target for that Season and Planning Year.

The evaluation procedure is described in Section VI.2 of the Fall 2023 Block Energy and Capacity RFP Rules and is summarized below:

The evaluation of Bids for the procurement of a Capacity Product for AIC proceeds independently for each Season of a Planning Year and consists of two steps. In the first step, for a given Season of a Planning Year, all Bids that fail to meet the benchmark are eliminated. In the second step, for a given Season of a Planning Year, the Procurement Administrator evaluates the Bids that meet or beat the benchmark and selects the lowest priced Bids up to the ZRC Target for a Season and Planning Year. In order to fill the ZRC Target exactly for a Season and a Planning Year, it is possible that only some but not all ZRCs submitted by a Bidder at a specific price are selected. For example, for the Summer Season of a Planning Year, if a Bidder submits 50 ZRCs but the Procurement Administrator need only to select 20 ZRCs, only 20 of the 50 ZRCs would be selected and identified as winning Bids.

Additionally, in the procurement of Capacity Products for AIC, it is possible that multiple Bidders could submit Bids of the same amount ($/MW-day) for a given number of ZRCs for a given Season of a Planning Year, resulting in a tie for the highest accepted price for that Season and Planning Year. Such Bids are Tied Bids (at the Tied Price). If, in order to fill the ZRC Target exactly for such Season and Planning Year, only some of the ZRCs but not all ZRCs from the Tied Bids for such Season and Planning Year are needed, the ZRCs selected as part of the winning Bids will be selected at random from the Tied Bids. The Procurement Administrator will assign to each ZRC in a Tied Bid a random number between 0 and 1. The ZRCs from the Tied Bids are selected in increasing order of random number until the ZRC Target is filled for such Season and Planning Year. No selection preference will be given to identical Bids submitted at any particular time or in any particular way.