Stakeholders at the PJM Operating Committee meeting on Thursday unanimously endorsed changes to Manual 1 to expand the use of synchrophasors and make them a requirement for certain projects under the Regional Transmission Expansion Plan (RTEP).

Shaun Murphy of PJM reviewed updates to the Control Center and Data Exchange Requirements section of Manual 1 to include new language on required placement of synchrophasors, also known as phasor measurement units (PMUs). The revisions were first endorsed at the July 7 Planning Committee meeting after several months of debates. (See PJM Stakeholders OK PMU Requirement.)

Murphy said PJM wants to expand PMU deployments to gain full real-time observability of all equipment of 100 kV and above on the grid. He said PMUs provide the ability to detect equipment failures and high-speed grid disturbances such as oscillations and to allow for post-event analysis that includes a dynamic model validation.

“As the synchrophasor technology grows, the more and more it can be used,” Murphy said.

Costs for the synchrophasor installation is anticipated to run about $120,000 to make a substation “PMU ready,” Murphy said, in addition to a $10,000 cost for a single PMU unit. PJM estimates annual costs of about $8 million for as many as 75 PMU installation projects each year, Murphy said, which is based on historical numbers of substation projects proposed in the RTEP process.

“We really think the benefits justify the additional costs,” Murphy said.

Alex Stern, director of RTO strategy for PSEG Services, said he recognizes the benefits of having the PMUs installed in the system. But he said he thought the manual language could be “massaged further” through a friendly amendment to clarify the need to meet NERC standards in the RTEP process.

Dave Souder, PJM’s senior director of system planning, said the RTO would be open to friendly amendments that strengthen the manual language if they don’t change the intent of the process.

The Manual 1 changes now go to the Aug. 20 Markets and Reliability Committee meeting for a first read and a final vote at the September meeting.

Operating Metrics Review

Stephanie Monzon, markets coordination manager for PJM, reviewed the July operating metrics, pointing out three spinning events in a month marked by high temperatures across the RTO.

The three spinning events took place July 6, 23 and 25, Monzon said, lasting about 10 minutes each. Monzon said the spinning events were a response to “sudden generation loss.”

Tier 2 penalties of 64.6 MW for the July 6 event and 37.5 MW for the July 25 event are being applied to the events, she said. “We had fairly decent Tier 2 response, but not exactly what we anticipated.”

In the monthly balancing authority area control error limit (BAAL) performance score, PJM had 49 excursions outside the limits for a total of 124 excursion minutes. Monzon said none of the excursions exceeded the BAAL time limit and there was “nothing anomalous” to report.

The average load forecast error for all hours in July was 1.59%, Monzon said, while the error for peak hours was 1.64%. “We had a fairly good forecast error for July.”

PJM recorded seven reserve sharing events with the Northeast Power Coordinating Council and had 31 post-contingency local load relief warnings and 15 hot weather alerts.

System Resilience Update

The last eight months have been a true test of the resilience of PJM’s systems, said Chris Pilong, director of dispatch.

Pilong noted that the COVID-19 pandemic forced the sequestration of control room operators at the PJM campus, which recently ended. He said the possibility of sequestration had been discussed hypothetically, but the plans had never been implemented.

He also pointed to the conversion of the simulator room into a third control room. PJM employees worked diligently to install the technology and security needed to make the room fully functional and to give the RTO more redundancy, he said.

PJM has continued posting best practices and lessons learned from the pandemic on its website. The RTO is also working with NERC and other reliability coordinators to help bring together industry-wide lessons learned on COVID-19 to prepare for any future pandemics, with work expected to ramp up in the fall, Pilong said.

Thursday’s meeting was part of a “fitting week” to talk about resilience, Pilong said, with Hurricane Isaias moving through parts of the PJM region last Tuesday and a crash of the RTO’s website last Monday night that took down functionality for stakeholders.

Pilong said that if a scenario would have been created a year ago that on one day the RTO would have to operate through a pandemic, a hurricane, flooding, seven tornados, power outages and IT issues all on the same day, it wouldn’t have been believable.

“It’s been an interesting week but another good chance to show the resilience of the system [and the ability of] PJM and its members to handle those things and recover,” Pilong said.

Regulation Performance Update

Members challenged PJM’s performance-based regulation market during a presentation by Gabrielle Genuario of the Performance Compliance Department. The challenges came during a discussion of how many times the system is automatically pegged, or fixed to a single value, for 20 to 30 minutes versus over 30 minutes.

PJM’s performance-based regulation market splits the dispatch signal in two: RegA for slower-moving, longer-running units; and RegD for faster-responding units like batteries that operate for shorter periods.

Genuario said the automatic signal pegging has been “a little higher” over the last couple of months since the COVID-19 pandemic started. RegA saw 101 20- to 30-minute durations and 67 durations longer than 30 minutes in July. Those numbers compared to 40 20- to 30-minute durations and 17 durations longer than 30 minutes in July 2019.

RegD saw 10 20- to 30-minute durations in July, Genuario said, compared to three in July 2019.

One stakeholder said having the signal automatically pegged 10 times in a 31-day month is “not ideal” for RegD and called the 101 automatic signal pegs in RegA a “huge number.” The stakeholder said they didn’t understand how the incidents were linked to the pandemic.

Genuario said 15 hot-weather alerts and seven reserve sharing events helped skew the July numbers. Dispatchers are also seeing higher load forecast errors with the hotter summer weather.

“It doesn’t seem to be a concern, but it’s something we’re definitely looking at,” Genuario said.

The stakeholder said they didn’t understand how the numbers couldn’t be a concern for PJM. They said the automatic signal pegs had been brought up as a major issue in past years among stakeholders.

Glen Boyle of PJM said the RTO is not seeing the pegging translate into BAAL performance concerns. He said there are several variables in play, including issues with the load forecast and hot weather and the recent changeover on June 23 to the five-minute auto case execution for real-time security-constrained economic dispatch cases. (See PJM Stakeholders OK 5-Minute Dispatch Proposal.)

The stakeholder said PJM should possibly look at carrying additional reserves. “I would like to see us do something to get back down to the numbers we previously had if possible,” they said.