ECMPS Support

The 2011 Q2 Reporting period begins on Friday, July 1st. Sources required to report emissions data under the Acid Rain Program (ARP), Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) have 30 days to submit their emissions data to the EPA using the ECMPS Client Tool. (Note, because the 30th day falls on a weekend, the last day to submit will actually be August 1st.)

During this reporting period, the EPA expects to receive over 3,900 emissions data submissions. Given these large number of files that need to be submitted over the next 30 days, we, at technical support, encourage all sources to start working as soon as possible on the evaluation and submission of their data.

Start Early

We want to encourage sources to start early primarily because, with the large volume of submissions expected, if you have questions, you will get a faster response to your technical support request, the earlier in the month that you submit your request. If you wait until later in the month to begin working with your data and you run into problems that require technical support, your request will be added to a much longer queue than if you had submitted the request earlier in the submission period.

Technical Support Information

Information on getting technical support through the resources on the Web site or by submitting a technical support request has all been consolidated in the Web site's Help section. We would like to highlight that, as necessary, FAQs and Known Issues will continue to be updated throughout the submission period. Hours for technical support are listed on the Contact Us page.

Resubmission Requests

Requests to resubmit QA or emissions data should be made using the Resubmission Request Form.

Keep Up-To-Date

To keep up-to-date with ECMPS News items, we would suggest subscribing to ECMPS News.

You can receive the ECMPS News posts via email by subscribing to ECMPS News or adding the ECMPS News feed to your RSS Reader. To subscribe via email, simply enter your email address in the box provided on the upper right part of the ECMPS News page and click the Subscribe button. To receive the RSS feed, click on the RSS feed, which also located at the bottom of every page on the Web site.

The computing center where the EPA Host System is housed will be undergoing electric service maintenance and testing on July 2-4, 2011. During that time, access to the EPA Host System will be unavailable.

The maintenance is scheduled to begin after business hours on July 1st, and access access should again be available early in the morning on July 5th.

In addition, the CAMD Business System (CBS) will be unavailable during the same time period.

Note, on July 4th, in observance of Independence Day, ECMPS and CBS Technical Support will be unavailable.

Labels: Scheduled Outage

During the recent June 16, 2011 update, a new CAMD Business System (CBS) support email address was added.

This email address should be used by CBS users who have questions related to using CBS. The email can be found by clicking on the Contact Us link in CBS or by sending an email to cbs-support@camdsupport.com. Emails sent to this address will receive an automatic reply indicating that the support request has been added to the queue. Once your request is in the queue, your request will be handled by the CBS support staff.

Labels: CAMD Business System

The 2011 Quarter 2 Release of the Client Tool is now available.

For details about what was included in this release, consult the Release Notes.

In order to use the Client Tool, you must be a Designated Representative, Alternate Designated Representative, or an ECMPS agent for a Representative. In addition, you must have a CAMD Business System (CBS) user name, current CBS password, and have completed a CROMERR Subscriber Agreement Form.

All current users of the Client Tool will be prompted to upgrade to this latest version the next time that each user logs in to the EPA Host System. For more information about the Update Service which updates the Client Tool, watch the Update Service tutorial.

All new users of the Client Tool should download and install the 2011 Q2 version of the Client Tool. Users are urged to follow all instructions on the Web site and to consult the Installation Guide for step-by-step instructions on how to install the Client Tool.

In order to insure that all technical support questions are tracked and answered, EPA has requested that all technical support questions, including installation questions, be submitted to ECMPS Technical Support.

As usual, an ECMPS Client Tool update is scheduled to occur in the month prior to a reporting month. The 2011 Q2 software update is scheduled to be released on June 16, 2011. At that time, the latest version of the Client Tool--the 2011 Q2 version--will be made available.

In order to complete the deployment of the latest version of the Client Tool, the EPA Host System will be unavailable from June 8th through June 16th when the new version is released. During that time, users will only be able to use the Client Tool "offline".

In addition, the CAMD Business System (CBS) will be unavailable on two separate occasions in the coming weeks. The first will be on Friday, June 10th and Saturday, June 11th. The downtime will begin at approximately 4:00 p.m. EDT on the 10th and be completed by the end of the day on June 11th.

The second downtime will be the morning of Thursday, June 16th. CBS will be unavailable for several hours starting around 7:00 a.m.