1 IT Update on Impact of Additional Congestion Zones Episode II

2 IT Update – Additional Congestion Zones EMMS –GOOD NEWS: Initial tests show minimal processing impact –Additional testing taking place this week –Performance enhancements in progress due to increased processing times in late 2003 Adjusting database indexes New hardware on order due to be received in Q1 –No evidence of vendor performance guarantees found yet

3 IT Update – Additional Congestion Zones Lodestar –No performance guarantees from vendor –We are in the early stages of testing “blade” servers to achieve performance enhancements In theory, our production Lodestar environment could be scaled to handle any number of zones and settlement runs

4 IT Update – Additional Congestion Zones Questions?