PJM stakeholders last week endorsed the RTO’s package of updates to real-time value (RTV) market rules that call for additional penalties for generation operators that abuse the rules.

The RTO’s package was endorsed with 73% support at last week’s Market Implementation Committee meeting. In a nonbinding poll, the package received 55% support over maintaining the status quo.

Laura Walter, senior lead economist for PJM, provided an update on the work completed during the MIC’s special sessions on the rules and reviewed the proposed packages from the solutions matrix.

The special sessions have been taking place since January, after stakeholders endorsed an issue charge at the Markets and Reliability Committee’s meeting in December. (See “Real-time Values,” PJM MRC Briefs: Dec. 19, 2019.) The problem statement said observations indicated RTVs were being used to consistently override unit-specific parameter limits or parameter-limited exceptions.

The original intent of RTVs was to provide a way for generation operators to communicate current operating capability to PJM if their resources could not meet their unit-specific parameter limits or exceptions, Walter said. Generators opting to use RTVs forfeit operating reserve credits and make-whole payments.

The PJM package would require that market participants repeatedly failing to reflect actual operating conditions in their submitted operating parameters could be referred to FERC for enforcement. A market participant would be required to enter a forced outage ticket into PJM’s Generator Availability Data System (eGADS) for the period of increased notification, start-up time and/or minimum downtime.

For the timeline of an RTV submittal, Walter said, the package would require that the requested time period not exceed one market day. She said that when an RTV is requested, it would be available for that one day; then the entire schedule would revert to the previous day’s values.

The package also calls for adding RTVs to the Tariff. Currently, RTVs are mentioned only in the manual, Walter said.

In a nonbinding poll conducted in August, 55% of stakeholders said they supported the PJM package, and 10% gave support for a package by the Independent Market Monitor, while 71% said they were satisfied with the status quo.

Details of the Monitor’s package were also presented. In a vote held after the PJM package, the Monitor’s only garnered 8% support.

The Monitor’s proposal included removing minimum run time from the list of eligible parameters with RTV submissions. It also said units that choose to run longer could self-schedule beyond the minimum run time, with PJM operator notification.

The proposal also would have aimed to prevent withholding by using longer minimum run times. Any penalties collected would have been allocated to daily real-time load.

The PJM package will now move on to the MRC in December for a first read.

Manual 11 Revisions Endorsed

Stakeholders unanimously endorsed updates to Manual 11 designed to increase transparency and conform to the current PJM process for calculating LMPs as part of the problem statement regarding five-minute dispatch and pricing.

Vijay Shah, senior engineer in real-time market operations for PJM, reviewed the proposed updates to Manual 11: Energy & Ancillary Services Market Operations. The changes include an added reference to the day-ahead and real-time sections in section 2.2: Definition of Locational Marginal Price and change “LMP verification” to “price verification” throughout section 2.10: Verification Procedure, as verification includes review of real-time and ancillary service prices.

In section 2.11: Price-Bounding Violations, language was updated to state that all interval prices will be posted, Shah said, and any intervals that do not pass an output consistency check will be indicated on PJM’s website. The section was not included in the first read of the changes at the MIC meeting in October.

Shah said the changes are not related to the five-minute dispatch and pricing short-term changes that were filed with FERC in July. (See PJM Stakeholders OK 5-Minute Dispatch Proposal.)

Public Distribution Microgrids

Natalie Tacka, an engineer in PJM’s applied innovation department, reviewed a proposal and provided a first read of updates to Manual 11: Energy & Ancillary Services Market Operations and Manual 18: PJM Capacity Market regarding business rules for public distribution microgrids.

Tacka said work on the issue first began last year in the former Distributed Energy Resources Subcommittee (DERS) and has continued into the new DER and Inverter-Based Resources Subcommittee (DIRS).

A microgrid is defined as a system of generating facilities and load that can operate both while connected to and off the main grid, Tacka said. PJM is looking to define a public distribution microgrid as a microgrid that contains a PJM generating facility that can generate while connected to and “islanded” from the broader grid and uses public utility distribution wires.

Tacka said a public distribution microgrid would not include any NERC bulk electric or transmission facilities. The electric distribution company will determine if the public distribution microgrid is wholesale or retail when islanded.

The Manual 11 language includes provisions for reflecting islanded conditions in a resource’s availability for energy and ancillary services, Tacka said, while Manual 18 language adds clarification for performance assessment interval treatment of public distribution microgrids serving as generation capacity resources.

The committee will be asked to endorse the manual changes at the MIC meeting in December.

UTC Uplift Changes

Ray Fernandez, manager of market settlements development for PJM, provided a first read of updates to Manual 28: Operating Agreement Accounting to conform with changes ordered by FERC regarding uplift charges on up-to-congestion (UTC) transactions (EL14-37).

In its order issued in July, FERC determined that PJM’s current uplift allocation rules are unjust, unreasonable and unduly preferential because they do not allocate uplift to UTCs. (See FERC Orders Uplift Charges on PJM UTCs.)

PJM was directed by the commission to submit a replacement rate that revises the RTO’s current uplift allocation rules to allocate uplift to UTCs “in a manner that treats a UTC, for uplift allocation purposes, as if the UTC were equivalent to a [decrement bid] at the sink point of the UTC.”

Fernandez said UTCs will now be allocated in both real-time and day-ahead uplift.

PJM is seeking stakeholder endorsement of the manual changes at the December MIC meeting.