NERC has finished transitioning to the latest version of its situational awareness tool and plans to introduce it to reliability coordinators once the vendor developing the system has implemented new modeling software, the vendor’s CEO told the ERO’s Operating Reliability Subcommittee on Feb. 11.
Michael Legatt, CEO of ResilientGrid — the Austin, Texas-based developer of Situational Awareness for FERC, NERC and the Regional Entities (SAFNR v.3) — told the committee that along with improving the modeling, the firm has focused on updating the communication protocols from SAFNR v.2 to allow better communication with the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC). The tool, which was piloted in 2017 during GridEx IV, will replace the 2010-vintage v.2. (See Situational Awareness Tool Nears Rollout.)
Additional features being added to the tool include separate views for RCs, FERC and the ERO Enterprise, along with advanced data visualization tools incorporating a range of information such as substation performance, space weather, gas pipeline availability and fire tracking.
“We’re building a process that will allow you, the RCs, at very little manual work other than review, to continue to push updated model information into SAFNR v.3,” Legatt said. “Therefore, the impact to the RCs will be lower, and the accuracy of the tool will go up significantly.”
SAFNR v.3 went live for NERC and the ERO Enterprise in December 2019. Darrell Moore of NERC said that the tool will be rolled out to remaining stakeholders after ResilientGrid finishes building models with updated information from the RCs.
Clarity Sought on IROL Exceedance Metric
The task force revising the metric for identification of interconnection reliability operating limits (IROLs) brought two recommendations to the subcommittee for feedback: to ensure consistency in reporting by requiring operators to report all IROL exceedances with no operating margin added, and to change the threshold for reporting from 10 seconds to one minute.
“As the ORS is kind of our [forum] to talk to subject matter experts, we want your feedback on the proposed changes — should we start taking the steps to make this modification so that we can have a better, more valuable metric?” asked Maggie Peacock, manager of advanced analytics at SERC Reliability and chair of NERC’s Performance Analysis Subcommittee.
Several members of the subcommittee urged the task force to address what they saw as a lack of clarity in the recommendations. In particular, John Norden, director of operations at ISO-NE, said the metric should be clear as to whether it includes any buffer an operator has built into its system.
“It probably should be consistent, because the last thing we want to do is give doubt to an operator,” Norden said. “[If] you have a 1,000-MW transfer limit as your limit, and the operator gets to 28 minutes and he’s at 1,050, should he take action to get below 1,000 in the [last] two minutes, or should he say I have a buffer? … The limit’s the limit, as far as I’m concerned, and that’s what you should operate to, whatever you put in front of the operator.”
Members Object to RCIS 2021 Development
The group developing the successor to the Reliability Coordinator Information System (RCIS) is currently working on a request for proposals. It hopes to choose a vendor by the second quarter and introduce the tool by early next year.
Creation of the new software, called RCIS 2021, is being conducted by the Eastern Interconnect Data Sharing Network (EIDSN), a group created in 2014 to further develop industry tools that NERC has decided it no longer wants to maintain. NERC initiated the project in 2017 to replace the current RCIS with a more modern architecture and provide a common platform for instant communication between RCs, as well as between RCs, NERC, and transmission owners and operators.
Some at the meeting raised strong concerns about a perceived lack of input from Western operators into the system, as EIDSN is composed of representatives from the Eastern and Quebec interconnections. These were amplified when EIDSN Executive Director Jim Schinski said that use of RCIS 2021, which is required by several NERC standards, will be subject to a fee paid to EIDSN.
“Speaking for my company, and I think for others, we’re going to have some strong objections to that,” said Tim Beach, director of reliability coordination at RC West. “Because you’re [requiring] us to participate … and pay, with no control over requirements or cost in the future.
“I understand the tool needs to be replaced. Full agreement with that. … But the process of getting there and the requirement to use it seems a little upside-down to us in the West,” he added. [Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article mistakenly attributed this quote to Tim Reynolds, manager of event analysis and situation awareness for the Western Electricity Coordinating Council.]
Richard Mandes of EIDSN told members that “they’re paying for that functionality today through NERC” and that the fee paid to EIDSN would cover the same services they are getting now. He also promised that members would have an opportunity to provide input into the design of the system through NERC before it is introduced.
— Holden Mann
