2025 Shultz Energy Fellowships: California Independent System Operator (CAISO), Market Performance and Advanced Analytics
Regional-, state-, and city-level efforts are essential in our fight against climate change, especially in the field of energy. Stanford University is committed to helping by integrating its students into energy and climate ecosystems in the West through the Shultz Energy Fellowships program, an energy-related summer fellowship program for undergraduate and graduate students.
Named in honor of former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, one of the most widely admired American public servants of the past half-century, the program offers a suite of paid, energy-related public service fellowships for Stanford students in Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawai'i, and Utah during the summer.
You will be one of two Shultz Energy Fellows at CAISO; the other will be an undergraduate fellow in Resource Assessment and Planning. The fellowship runs from Monday, June 23, 2025 to Friday, August 29, 2025.
Organization/Agency mission or role in state government
The California Independent System Operator Corporation (ISO) is located in Folsom, California, and manages the flow of electricity across the high-voltage, long-distance power lines that make up over 80 percent of California’s electric power grid. The not-for-profit public benefit corporation safeguards the economy and well-being of over 30 million customers by "keeping the lights on” 24/7.
The ISO has one of the most modern electricity generation and delivery control centers in North America. It has been described as a hybrid of the New York Stock Exchange and NASA’s mission control and powers the world’s eighth largest economy—California. The ISO designed its control center with a clean, green world in mind by using the latest high-tech grid reliability and renewable resource integration tools. To deliver all that clean energy, the ISO employs advanced technologies to monitor the power grid in milliseconds to ensure the 26,000-mile transmission network and over 850 power plants are always ready to meet the electricity needs of people in California and in the six states that are members of the western Energy Imbalance Market.
As the nerve center for the power grid, the ISO matches buyers and sellers of electricity, facilitating over 28,000 market transactions every day to ensure enough power is on hand to meet demand. Every five minutes the ISO forecasts electrical demand, accounts for operating reserves and dispatches the lowest cost power plant unit to meet demand while ensuring enough transmission capacity is available to deliver the power.
The ISO is the only system operator in the western United States supported by a competitive auction-style electricity market. The California ISO is the hub of efforts underway at state and government agencies and research laboratories to advance grid and system technologies, policies and processes because the ISO must use innovations to reliably operate the grid at all times and identify and dispatch the most cost efficient power to meet demand. The ISO is leading the way to tomorrow’s energy network through the following strategies:
- Lead the transition to renewable energy;
- Maintain reliability during industry transformation; and
- Expand regional collaboration to unlock mutual benefits.
The ISO is leading the world in the development of policies to effectively integrate large amounts of variable output renewable generation into the wholesale grid. The ISO is also leading the development of policies that enable distribution system resources, such as demand response, rooftop solar, and energy storage to participate in the ISO’s wholesale market. This will, for the first time, empower consumers to have the ability to become energy suppliers as well.
The ISO is regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and complies with standards set by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation and the Western Electricity Coordinating Council.
Potential Projects
In the Market Design and Analysis Division, the fellow will support the ISO’s efforts in assessing the market efficiency of different design features implemented in the ISO’s markets to reliably operate the electric grid. A successful experience will include learning about the core design and function of the ISO’s markets, acquiring hands-on experience with analytics techniques to assess and monitor market performance.
The California ISO is looking to host a student who is passionate about shaping the future of the California ISO’s electricity market through engineering and economic analysis. To be successful, the student should have strong data science skills, including R/Phyton programming skills, as well as background in economics and optimization.
The topics for projects include:
- Implementation of a methodology to quantify economic benefits of the day-ahead market expansion: Contribute to the implementation of a methodology in R or Python to quantify the gross economic benefits of the extended day-ahead market that the ISO will launch in Q1 2026. This methodology will assess the day-ahead market solution and develop counterfactual scenarios to estimate the additional benefits gained from the expansion of the day-ahead market. It will involve programming the calculation of production costs for the ISO market solution, taking into account schedules, market prices, market bids and offers, economic transactions between different areas of the market, the effect of greenhouse gas pricing, and the impact of uncertainty from wind, solar, and load within the market footprint. This will be a tool the ISO uses to track the benefits of the day-ahead market on a daily basis.
- Application of Data Analytics to inform policy changes: The ISO is currently exploring a variety of topics to enhance price formation in its markets, including scarcity pricing, fast-start pricing, and market power mitigation. To guide data-driven policy development, the ISO evaluates existing market performance and the potential impacts of proposed design changes. This project will involve applying data science techniques using R or Python to perform descriptive and, potentially, predictive analytics specific to a selected area of the price formation effort. The results of this analysis will be integrated and used to inform and guide ongoing stakeholder discussions during the policy development.
Work Environment
- Remote/Hybrid: The ISO invites the Shultz Fellow to work remotely, with in person event attendance (agreed upon in advance).
Potential Mentor
- Guillermo Bautista Alderete, PhD, Director, Market Performance and Advanced Analytics
2024 Fellows
- Selma Sharaf, MS '25 Civil and Environmental Engineering, Atmosphere/Energy
- Elijah Schacter, Economics, '25
- Learn more about their experiences at CAISO:
- Strong research, quantitative analysis and computer software, writing and communication skills are highly desired.
- Knowledge of Electricity Markets and optimization (linear programming); programming language (Python, VB) related to data processing and analysis.
- Preferred majors include: Electrical Engineering, Operations Research, Economics, Environmental Policy, or related fields.
All Shultz fellows must be enrolled in the spring quarter before their fellowship.
All Shultz fellows must take a one-unit spring workshop course, 'Energy Policy in California and the West' taught by Professor Bruce Cain and Visiting Fellow Felicia Marcus that will provide an in-depth analysis of the role of California state agencies, the Western Interstate Energy Board, and the Western Electricity Coordinating Council in driving energy policy development, technology innovation, and market structures. Course number is CEE 263G / POLISCI 73 / PUBLPOL 73 / ENERGY 73. Schedule: Wednesdays from 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm.
Please note that this opportunity is for graduate students. Interested undergraduates can apply via SIG.
