SPP’s Western Reliability Working Group last week approved several governing documents as it continues its preparation for its new reliability coordinator function in the Western Interconnection.

Approved during a two-day meeting July 16-17 were the:

• Communication Protocol for the West, which governs emergency and nonemergency situations where operating instructions are issued or received by an SPP operator. SPP’s Margaret Quispe said it is “very similar to what we’ve used” in the Eastern Interconnection under reliability standard COM-002-4.
• Modification Oversight Process for the Western Interconnection, which was recommended for approval by the Western Reliability Executive Committee (WREC). Senior Interregional Coordinator Clint Savoy said the document was changed somewhat since the group discussed it in May based on feedback from the Executive Committee. The WREC delayed action on the document on Wednesday, saying it supported the edits but wanted to see a clean version before approving.
• RC Restoration Plan. Senior Operations Engineer Neil Robertson said the document included “minor modifications” made since the committee’s last meeting. “In the process of preparing for our certification visit [by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council], SPP’s compliance group suggested we explain … how this document is distributed to [comply] with the EOP-006 standard,” he explained.
• Congestion Management Methodology, which will set the RC’s procedures for mitigating system operating limit and interconnection reliability operating limit exceedances in real-time operations for both pre- and post-contingency conditions. “[We are] of the opinion that a consistent … methodology that everybody agrees on would help us do our job as the RC in a much more streamlined way,” explained SPP’s Yasser Bahbaz, a senior engineer. “When we assign any relief allocation to any of you guys, you know what the expectations are. The approach and the methodology has been documented, and there’s hopefully not a lot of back and forth in real time on who should give what relief.” The methodology was recommended for approval by the Congestion Management and Seams Task Force last month, he added.
• Data disturbance document, documenting the process by which SPP identifies bulk electric system elements for which dynamic disturbance reporting data is required under PRC-OO2-2.

Tennille Tims, an SPP project manager, provided an update on the RTO’s progress in onboarding its RC customers, saying Inter-Control Center Communications Protocol (ICCP) connectivity was complete for 12 of the 13 customers.

WECC Update

The working group also heard an update from Steve Ashbaker, WECC’s reliability initiatives director, who said the regional entity was continuing to prepare for Phase 2 of CAISO’s expanded RC West footprint.

CAISO completed Phase 1 on July 1, when it became RC for 16 balancing authorities and transmission operators in California and Mexico. Phase 2 will expand the ISO’s footprint to 23 other entities in the Western Interconnection.

WECC will be conducting site visits in CAISO’s Folsom and Lincoln, Calif., offices July 30 through Aug. 1.

“The RC West Phase 1 transition went very smooth. Things continue to seem to be working very well, at least what we’re hearing and what we’re seeing,” Ashbaker said. “They’ve been fortunate in their shadow operations and in their real-time operations. They’ve seen quite a bit go on with … the energy emergency alerts, some earthquake activity —fortunately that didn’t cause a whole lot of chaos on the power system.”

WECC has a site visit planned with SPP in August.

Ashbaker said the Western Area Power Administration has agreed to take possession of 18 months of historical synchrophasor data from Peak Reliability. Ashbaker said WECC had considered taking the data although it lacks the hardware or software to read them. “We just didn’t want that data to be lost. But WAPA has stepped up … and said they said they would be willing to take that on,” he said.

WREC Update

During a brief WREC meeting Wednesday, staff said SPP and CAISO have entered an RC-to-RC agreement, the first business arrangement between the two. SPP is still working with CAISO to gain necessary data for its Western operations.

“It’s taken longer than expected,” SPP Director of System Operations C.J. Brown said. The RTO has since decided its best approach is to go to Peak Reliability to secure the data, he said.

The RC-to-RC agreement was executed last week.

— Rich Heidorn Jr. and Tom Kleckner