ERCOT’s Technical Advisory Committee last week held its first full working meeting — albeit virtually — since the COVID-19 outbreak, endorsing a raft of revision requests, reviewing the committee’s strategic goals, and receiving updates from the Real-Time Co-Optimization Task Force (RTCTF).

The committee last conducted a full meeting in January. It has held several information sessions since, taking email votes on changes to the grid operator’s protocols and a $219 million transmission project. (See “Corpus Christi Tx Project Gets OK,” ERCOT Technical Advisory Committee Briefs: May 27, 2020.)

Speaking during a webinar the day after the TAC’s meeting Wednesday, ERCOT CEO Bill Magness said staff’s “experimentation” with conducting webinars resulted in a meeting “where the TAC was really able to do everything.” (See related story, Companies Debate When to Bring Back Staff.)

“Yesterday showed us we can do things on a remote basis,” he said. “[Stakeholder] meetings are still happening and still going on. We’re working through a lot of complexities with real-time co-optimization, but those folks aren’t missing a beat so far, knock on wood.”

The committee and the Board of Directors have already approved the use of roll-call votes during their remote meetings and modified other rules and procedures that compensate for the inability to meet in person. ERCOT’s corporate members will convene virtually July 10 to vote on the changes.

In-person meetings will not resume until October, at the earliest — if then.

ERCOT in May extended mandatory work-from-home rules through September. Staff can request “limited periods” of on-site work for “business-critical” task that can’t be completed remotely, but approvals will be limited and must come from executive leadership, human resources or security and facilities.

ERCOT Finds New Corporate HQ Site

Staff discussed with the committee their plans to move into a new office space, assuring members the new digs would not increase the system administrative fee.

Facing a 2022 expiration on its Austin office space it leases for corporate staff and Independent Market Monitor, ERCOT engaged a commercial real estate firm to find a new one. The grid operator’s criteria included at least 35,000 square feet of space, 180 parking spaces, proximity to the city’s airport and hotels, and an option to purchase.

The search resulted in a location within the same MetCenter business park where ERCOT is currently located. The board this month gave staff the go-ahead to execute an agreement with developers, which is expected to be finalized by the end of July, with construction to begin in August.

The grid operator expects the two-story building to be ready for occupancy by the end of next summer. Construction, equipment and furnishing costs are expected to be about $20 million, with ERCOT expecting to break even within 13 years.

Staff said a lack of meeting space and technology issues are the main reasons they are moving from their home of 20 years. ERCOT supports about 300 stakeholder meetings each year at its MetCenter location.

“With the pandemic, do we even need a MetCenter? The answer is a strong ‘yes,’” said Betty Day, vice president of security and compliance. “The number of meetings is increasing.”

The new building will include two additional meeting rooms among its 5,000 additional square feet of public meeting space. Informal meeting areas, public booths and phone rooms will also be added.

Day said staff have had “multiple” conversations with the board about the plan. During individual meetings with stakeholders last fall, staff “made stakeholders aware this lease was coming up and we would look at alternatives,” she said.

Committee members expressed concern over making a costly real estate decision during a bad economy and encouraged further due diligence. Day said ERCOT felt the project’s costs were “reasonable.”

“We’re where we are,” Magness said during his online panel discussion. “We had to move on making a decision. As long as there’s ERCOT, there’ll be meetings. We’re moving forward with the real estate decision in this strange environment.”

Software Error Results in ‘Minimal’ Market Exposure

Staff said a software error in ERCOT’s credit monitoring and management system resulting from a 2012 protocols change resulted in “minimal” exposure to the market.

Mark Ruane, director of settlements, retail and credit, said errors in a real-time liability forward (RTLF) calculation resulted in a 100% multiplier, rather than the proposed 150% multiplier, being applied to some components of the real-time liability calculation, among other errors.

System limitations kept staff from quantifying the number of instances where an erroneous calculation determined a counterparty’s total potential exposure, Ruane said. He said the error may have resulted in either higher or lower RTLF estimates.

Staff patched the error on June 4 by aligning the calculation with the 2012 Nodal Protocol revision request (NPRR) that reduced the time frame for an operating day’s cash clearing and correspondingly reduced required collateral. ERCOT notified market participants of the error that same day.

Given the chance to ask questions, none of the TAC members did.

RTCTF Continues its Work

ERCOT’s Matt Mereness, chair of the RTCTF, told the TAC that the group met June 22 to consider ancillary services’ deployment and recall. Staff walked the task force through a 44-page slide deck in sharing their view and understanding of the process.

“As we develop the protocols, sometimes it’s hard to see how everything fits together,” Mereness said.

The task force is reviewing 90 of 187 binding document sections. It has reached consensus on 64 sections as it works toward a November deadline to develop real-time co-optimization’s protocols.

TAC Endorses Consent Agenda’s 16 Changes

The committee unanimously approved a 16-item consent agenda in a voice vote that concluded the meeting. Many of the changes were noncontroversial cleanup items; some removed gray-boxed language that is no longer needed. Four other changes were tabled while waiting on related revisions to pass through the stakeholder process.

The changes included six NPRRs, four changes to the Nodal Operating Guide (NOGRR), three revisions to the Planning Guide (PGRRs), a system change request (SCR), and single revisions to the Resource Registration Glossary (RRGRR) and the Verifiable Cost Manual (VCMRR):

• NPRR903: clarifies the deviations that may occur with day-ahead market delays and adds language requiring ERCOT to issue a market notice for any act or omission to ensure the day-ahead process is successfully completed.
• NPRR973: adds definitions for generator step-up and main power transformer to the Nodal Protocols and clarifies their uses.
• NPRR983: deletes remaining gray-boxed language associated with NPRR257 (Monitoring Programs and Changes to Posting Requirements of Documents Considered CEII).
• NPRR990: deletes the remaining gray box for NPRR889 (RTF-1 Replace Non-Modeled Generator with Settlement Only Generator) and relocates the defined term “combined cycle train” from “Resource” to “Resource Attribute.”
• NPRR992: ensures the day-ahead liability estimate correctly includes ERCOT contingency reserve service charges and payments, as intended by NPRR863 (Creation of ERCOT Contingency Reserve Service and Revisions to Responsive Reserve).
• NPRR993: clarifies gray-boxed language after the concurrent approval of NPRR902 (ERCOT Critical Energy Infrastructure Information) and NPRR928 (Cybersecurity Incident Notification).
• NOGRR196: clarifies language used by NPRR973-proposed defined terms “generation step-up” and “main power transformer.”
• NOGRR200: deletes all remaining gray-boxed language associated with NOGRR025 (Monitoring Programs for QSEs, TSPs and ERCOT).
• NOGRR202: removes language regarding the posting timeline for resources’ megawatt limits when providing responsive reserve service. The requirement is now outlined in the Other Binding Document procedure for calculating individual resources’ limits.
• NOGRR205: clarifies gray-boxed language to maintain consistency with revisions adopted from NOGRR197 (Align Responsive Reserve Manual Deployment Requirements with Current Practice) following the November 2019 incorporation of NOGRR191 (Related to NPRR939, Modification to Load Resources Providing RRS to Maintain Minimum PRC on Generators During Scarcity Conditions) into the guide. It also corrects an error in ERCOT’s administrative comments to NOGRR191 that inadvertently changed the language.
• PGRR074: clarifies language used by NPRR973-proposed defined terms “generation step-up” and “main power transformer.”
• PGRR078: specifies that data related to the regional transmission plan and special planning studies considered protected information may be posted to the market information system’s certified area for transmission service providers. The change also includes updated resource asset registration form generator data postings to the system.
• PGRR080: aligns the Planning Guide with NERC standard TPL-007-4 (Transmission System Planned Performance for Geomagnetic Disturbance Events) by identifying responsibilities for performing studies needed to complete benchmark and supplemental geomagnetic disturbance vulnerability assessments.
• RRGRR022: clarifies language used by NPRR973-proposed defined terms “generation step-up” and “main power transformer.”
• SCR810: adds logic to ERCOT’s energy management system by removing the flag that indicates to the operator that a unit representing a DC tie does not count toward the 2% criterion for activating transmission constraints.
• VCMRR207: removes from the manual and its appendix language regarding the validation rules imposed on ERCOT’s external telemetry and used in the resource-limit calculator. This maintains consistency between the manual and the protocols by aligning energy storage resource-related provisions with NPRR986 (BESTF-2 Energy Storage Resource Energy Offer Curves, Pricing, Dispatch and Mitigation) and its provision that storage resources do not have start-up or minimum-energy costs and sets their mitigated offer cap at the systemwide cap.