NERC’s Reliability and Security Technical Committee (RSTC) held its first full meeting via conference call on Thursday following the official dissolution of the Planning, Operating and Critical Infrastructure Protection Committees.

RSTC Transition Plan Updates

Although the RSTC officially assumed the functions of the earlier committees at its first meeting in March, the new body is still working to develop its own strategic plan for carrying on the work of its predecessors. (See RSTC Tackles Organization Issues in First Meeting.) According to a timeline shared at Wednesday’s meeting, this process is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

One of the biggest challenges facing the transition team is bringing on the various subcommittees and working groups it inherited from the retiring committees. While RSTC leadership confirmed at the last meeting that the short-term plan is for those groups to continue their existing projects and report to the RSTC in lieu of their previous committees, a more in-depth review is currently underway to develop a more effective project pipeline. Transition team members said that review is taking longer than expected but is still expected to be completed by August.

“Our main focus has been on defining what that future state organizational structure and operating model might look like for all of the different subgroups,” said Kayla Messamore of Evergy, a member of the transition team. “We’ve tried to think through the specific processes that are outlined in the RSTC charter and also the different activities that have been outlined in the RISC report and other forums as we align the different organizational structures.”

The team also acknowledged that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has complicated the transition due to the inability of subcommittee and working group members to meet face to face. The committee has already converted its next scheduled meeting from 1-4 p.m. Sept. 15 to a webinar, and may do the same for the following session — currently planned for Dec. 15-16 — based on the situation at that time. At that meeting, the transition team plans to present the completed operational plan to the full committee.

July Release Targeted for State of Reliability Report

NERC’s 2020 State of Reliability Report shows overall improvements in reliability across the North American electric grid, according to John Moura, NERC’s director of reliability assessment and performance analysis. The drafting team is currently targeting a release date in mid-to-late July.

“Last report I said it was the best year yet, and 2019 actually beats that,” Moura said. (See NERC Seeks Resilience Metrics, Focus on Resource Shifts.) “We definitely have a good trend.”

Specific figures for 2019 have not been released yet, but the positive developments cited by Moura include the following:

• No category 3, 4 or 5 events (unintended loss of load or generation of 2,000 MW or more) compared to two category 3 events in 2018;
• Declining rates and severity of generation and transmission outages; and
• Stable or improving frequency response in most areas.

Moura said 2019 did see a “slight uptick” in the number of energy emergency alerts called, with the greatest increase in the Western interconnection, indicating that “we’re getting closer to the edge … operationally.” He also said that the changing resource mix, along with growing cyber and physical security threats, continues to present significant headwinds for the industry.

Committee Endorses MOD-025 Revisions

The committee voted to endorse a proposal by NERC’s Power Plant Modeling and Verification Task Force (PPMVTF) to revise reliability standard MOD-025-2 (verification and data reporting of generator real and reactive power capability and synchronous condenser reactive power capability).

The shortcomings of MOD-025-2 were the subject of a white paper released earlier this year by the task force after several years of work. Currently, the standard requires generator owners to verify their resources’ real and reactive power limits via stage tests and report the results to transmission planners every five years. However, the standard does not specify how the resulting information is to be applied, leading to widespread inaccuracies in planning models.

“This raw data is supplied to the transmission planners, who at this point don’t really know what to do with it,” said PPMVTF Chair Shawn Patterson. “They either have to trust that the generator owners have given them a good representation of their plant and this test doesn’t produce that, or in some cases … planners have been substituting these test points as the capacity limits … which would be incorrect.”

Patterson asked the committee both to endorse the white paper and to authorize the drafting of a standard authorization request (SAR) that would revise MOD-025-2 to specify what types of data may be used to represent generating resources in transmission planning models and how the data acquired in stage testing can be used. Both motions were approved unanimously.

IRPTF SARs Pass After Debate

The RSTC also voted to approve four SARs requested by the Inverter-based Resource Performance Task Force (IRPTF) based on its Review of NERC Reliability Standards white paper, approved by the Planning and Operating Committees earlier this year.

IRPTF’s suggested SARS would apply to the following standards:

• FAC-001-3 (Facility interconnection requirements) and FAC-002-2 (Facility interconnection studies) — Clarify which entity is responsible for determining which facility changes count as material modification; clarify that generator owners should notify affected entities before making a material modification; revise the term “materially modifying” to avoid confusion between FAC standards and FERC’s interconnection process.
• MOD-026-1 (Verification of models and data for generator excitation control system or plant volt/VAR control functions) and MOD-027-1 (Verification of models and data for turbine/governor and load control or active power/frequency control functions) — Revise or replace with a new model verification standard that accounts for inverter-based resources.
• PRC-002-2 (Disturbance monitoring and reporting requirements) — Require disturbance monitoring equipment in areas not covered by existing requirements.
• VAR-002-4.1 (Generator operation for maintaining network voltage schedules) — Clarify the applicability of the requirement for reporting status changes in voltage controlling devices.

The SARs covering the MOD and VAR standards passed without debate from the committee, but those covering the FAC and PRC standards were challenged by Brian Evans-Mongeon of Utility Services Inc. While in both cases Evans-Mongeon agreed with the need to clarify the relevant standards, he objected to the use of the standard drafting process on the grounds that it would take a significant amount of time and that “not everything needs to be resolved by SAR.”

“NERC has had plenty of documents over the past that have provided for clarifying confusing terms,” Evans-Mongeon added. “It just seems to me that … by going forward with a SAR on this particular set of standards … we would be postponing a relatively resolvable action [of] the creation of either implementation guidance or [a] reliability [guideline].”

Evans-Mongeon moved to have the FAC and PRC changes remanded to IRPTF for further study and alternative proposals. Both motions were defeated, in the first case through lack of votes and in the second because the motion did not receive a second.