VALLEY FORGE, Pa. — PJM’s Planning Committee last week endorsed revisions to Manual 14F that would remove the competitive exemption for Form 715 local planning criteria transmission projects.
The change follows a September ruling from FERC that ordered PJM to open the projects to competitive bidding, with regional cost sharing for those projects involving high-voltage lines. (See FERC Opens Local Tx Projects to Competition, Cost Sharing.)
The directives came in two orders prompted by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ August 2018 remand that found FERC erred when it assigned all the costs for two Form 715 transmission projects proposed by Dominion Energy to the Dominion zone.
Critical Infrastructure Oversight
The Critical Infrastructure Stakeholder Oversight Task Force will hold its first meeting Jan. 27, PJM’s Christina Stotesbury said.
The PC approved the task force’s issue charge last month after several delays. The group will consider whether the RTO must develop governing document language to deal with transmission system enhancements designed to reduce the number of critical assets identified under NERC’s critical infrastructure protection standard CIP-014. (See “Critical Infrastructure Mitigation,” PJM PC/TEAC Briefs: Dec. 12, 2019.)
Stotesbury said the task force will recommend governing document changes within six months.
Order 845 Update
PJM’s Susan McGill said staff have until Feb. 17 to address several outstanding issues on its compliance with FERC Order 845: identification and definition of contingent facilities; provisional and surplus interconnection service; and incorporation of advanced technologies. The commission on Dec. 19 accepted six of the 10 changes the RTO proposed in its first compliance filing on the order, which is intended to increase the transparency and speed of the generator interconnection process (ER19-1958).
McGill said PJM will bring manual changes for the accepted revisions to the PC for a first read in February.
Capacity Import Study
PJM’s capacity import study completed last month shows the RTO can handle the 3,500 MW of capacity benefit margin (CBM) emergency assistance assumed available in the 2019 Reserve Requirement Study.
The anticipated allocation of CBM differs from 2019 because of increased generation dispatch in the Niagara area of NYISO that reduced import capability in the North supply zone from 412 MW to 120 MW. Withdrawn deactivation requests of several large units in PJM also increased import capability from the West 1 zone from 1,104 MW to 1,402 MW.
– Christen Smith