VALLEY FORGE, Pa. — PJM experienced two spinning events last month and shared reserves with the Northeast Power Coordinating Council three times, the RTO said Thursday.
The RTO also recorded 15 post-contingency local load relief warnings, two high system voltages and four shortage cases.
Staff are also considering changing the way it presents some of the information in the monthly systems operations reports. PJM would replace current charts with a plot of its forecast errors — for both all hours and peak hours only — that would be averaged by month, for the last 25 months. Staff would also plot peak errors for each day of the previous months.
Unit-specific Parameters
Capacity sellers have just seven weeks to submit unit-specific parameter adjustment requests for delivery year 2020/21.
PJM also said a related task force that will address the misuse of real-time values in parameter-limited scheduling will assemble in late January. (See “Real-time Values,” PJM MRC Briefs: Dec. 19, 2019.)
Manual 38
PJM’s Operating Committee on Thursday endorsed another round of revisions to Manual 38: Operations Planning. This time, it’s a periodic review to update NERC standards and procedures, edit Section 1.2 on interregional studies and assessments, and revise both Attachments A and B. The target implementation date is Jan. 31.
NERC Lessons Learned: Current Transformers Prone to Failure
PJM said 138-kV current transformers (CTs) can suffer catastrophic failures because of moisture-contaminated kraft paper insulation.
During a presentation of NERC Lessons Learned, PJM’s Donnie Bielak said a faulty seal design allows moisture at the rim of two sections of the tank to be pulled in by internal pressure changes caused by the daily cycling of temperature. The issue caused multiple CTs to catch fire, he said.
A redesigned seal with a bolted gasket system solves the issue. Resource owners should also purchase spare parts and store those parts in a climate-controlled, dry, indoor environment to prevent future moisture contamination.
– Christen Smith