Markets and Reliability Committee

DASR Endorsed

Stakeholders at last week’s Markets and Reliability Committee meeting unanimously endorsed the final proposed changes to the 2021 day-ahead scheduling reserve (DASR) requirement.

David Kimmel, senior engineer in performance compliance for PJM, said the final 2021 DASR requirement is 4.74%, slightly lower than the 2020 requirement of 5.07%.

The DASR is the sum of the requirements for all zones within PJM and any additional reserves scheduled in response to a weather alert or other conservative operations. It is based on the under-forecasted load forecast error (LFE) of 2.16%, which is up 0.01% from last year, and the eDART forced outage component of 2.59%, down 0.33% from last year. The final 2021 DASR value will be incorporated into Manual 13. (See “Day-ahead Scheduling Reserve Endorsed,” PJM Operating Committee Briefs: Nov. 6, 2020.)

Consent Agenda

Several manual changes were endorsed through a vote on the consent agenda, with two stakeholders objecting to the changes and 20 abstaining.

The changes included:

• Updates to Manual 3: Transmission Operations incorporating clarifying changes resulting from its periodic review. (See “Manual Endorsements,” PJM Operating Committee Briefs: Nov. 6, 2020.)
• Revisions to Manual 3A: Energy Management System Model Updates and Quality Assurance resulting from its periodic review. PJM said the changes include correcting grammatical mistakes and updating references to the behind-the-meter generation (BTMG) rules that took effect in September 2019. (See “Manual First Reads,” PJM OC Briefs: Oct. 8, 2020.)
• Revisions to Manual 10: Pre-Scheduling Operations to incorporate clarifying changes resulting from its periodic review.
• Revisions to Manual 11: Energy & Ancillary Services Market Operations and Manual 12: Balancing Operations to address changes related to the five-minute dispatch and pricing from special sessions of the Market Implementation Committee. The revisions are 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. (See “Manual 11 Revisions Endorsed,” PJM MIC Briefs: Nov. 5, 2020.)
• Revisions to Manual 14D: Generator Operational Requirements to incorporate changes resulting from its periodic review. (See “Manual Changes Endorsed,” PJM OC Briefs: Oct. 8, 2020.)
• A minor correction to Manual 18: PJM Capacity Market regarding an effective date for notifying pseudo-tied resource owners of their assigned locational deliverability area (LDA) prior to each delivery year. The revision was endorsed as a “quick fix” at the October MIC meeting following a discussion in which some members objected to the process and suggested further talks on lingering pseudo-tie issues. (See “Manual 18 Update,” PJM MIC Briefs: Oct. 7, 2020.)

Members Committee

Manual 34 Revisions

Members debated for more than an hour over revisions to Manual 34 that emerged from discussion held for several months at the Stakeholder Process Forum.

Michele Greening of PJM reviewed the proposed revisions addressing stakeholder process updates at the Members Committee meeting. The review was originally listed on the agenda as a first read of the proposed changes, but several stakeholders objected to that description because red line language changes of Manual 34 were unavailable to examine.

Greening said PJM decided to take an extra month to make sure “due diligence” was done to make sure the proposed language was consistent with other language already in Manual 34.

“We felt it was timely to present the changes and bring additional awareness,” Greening said. “It will at least give some transparency into what is coming in the red line language next month.”

Greening said the proposed revisions were in five sections:

• Photography in Meetings: Members proposed requiring a written release be obtained from the subject of a photo prior to its publication.
• Motions and Amendments: Stakeholders proposed that an issue is collectively “owned” by the committee or group to which it is assigned. The change would allow the committee or group to take an issue directly to the MC for consideration if the issue is declined in the lower committee or group and other means have been exhausted. Greening said the right to bring an issue to the MC should be “exercised judiciously and only in exceptional circumstances,” including a significant and immediate threat to reliability or a market failure.
• Preference for Status Quo: Stakeholders proposed incorporating an additional threshold for moving a proposal to a senior standing committee. The language change says a proposal must pass a simple majority voting threshold and be preferred over the status quo by more than a simple majority. Current rules that do not require a majority prefer the alternative over the status quo.
• Forums: Defines the term of “forum” as a stakeholder body created by a standing committee or a senior standing committee through a majority vote that is created to address topics and scope outlined in its issue charge or charter.
• Posting Timelines: The change would require “defined milestones” for when meeting materials must be provided to stakeholders. Meeting materials would have to be sent to PJM for standing or senior standing committees eight days before a meeting with the materials posted for viewing five days before. Current rules require materials to be presented three days before a meeting. Materials for senior task forces, task forces and subcommittees would have to be transmitted to PJM seven days before a meeting, and the initial posting of materials would take place four days before a meeting. There would be a provisional status and voting for consideration on an issue when the posting timelines are not met. At the start of a meeting, the committee or senior task force will vote whether to accept provisional items and amend the agenda to include them.

  

Greening said PJM plans on consolidating the separate revision sections into a single red line draft of Manual 34 and present it for a first read at the December MC meeting. Greening said an additional Stakeholder Process Forum meeting is scheduled for Dec. 7 to conduct a page turn of the red line changes.

Adrien Ford of Old Dominion Electric Cooperative said she wanted to make sure stakeholders were “really paying attention” to the presentation because of the number of changes proposed in Manual 34. Ford said members have been working for several months in subgroups of the Stakeholder Process Forum to develop the proposed revisions.

Calpine’s David “Scarp” Scarpignato said discussions of possible manual changes at the Stakeholder Process Forum can be a valuable time saver by having the concepts fleshed out before being brought to the MC. But Scarp said he believes most of the working discussions on the changes should still be held at the MC and are too important to be left up to talks at a forum that has no process for voting.

“These are the rules at which the whole stakeholder process operates,” Scarp said. “Everybody at the MC should be seeing that.”

Dave Anders, PJM director of stakeholder affairs, said the RTO wanted to get the manual changes in front of a wider stakeholder body so members could have the opportunity to see what is proposed and delve into the changes more deeply in case they haven’t participated at the Stakeholder Process Forum meetings. Anders said PJM wanted to get stakeholders “comfortable” before being asked to vote on anything even with the red line language unavailable.

Scarp said it wasn’t clear from Greening’s presentation what problems the Manual 34 changes attempt to solve. Scarp highlighted the “Motions and Amendments” section, saying a stakeholder can already go to the MC with an issue and was confused by what changes the language made to the existing rules.

“We should understand what the objective is and what problem you’re trying to solve,” Scarp said.

Greening said the details of the changes are contained in the red line language and will be spelled out more clearly at the Dec. 7 Stakeholder Process Forum meeting. She said she understood the challenge of debating important manual changes without seeing the language behind it.

Greg Poulos, executive director of the Consumer Advocates of the PJM States, requested that the manual sections be separated when a final vote is taken. Poulos said he worries that some of the language changes are creating additional complicated processes and will lead to “lengthy discussions of administrative matters” at the MC instead of the substance of the issue.

Poulos said Manual 34 threatens to become as lengthy and complicated as the “tax code,” making it difficult to understand for those who have not been involved in the process for years.

“In the end, the important thing is we just vote,” Poulos said. “Let us vote on the core items, and people can make a decision.”

Consent Agenda

Stakeholders approved two measures on the consent agenda with one member objecting:

• Revisions to Manual 15: Cost Development Guidelines resulting from its biennial periodic review process.
• Endorsement of the installed reserve margin (IRM) and forecast pool requirement (FPR) values included in the 2020 Reserve Requirement Study results. PJM recommended an IRM of 14.4%, down from 14.8% in 2019. The FPR is essentially the same as 2019, at 1.0865 (8.65%) instead of 1.086 from the previous year. The study determines the IRM and FPR for 2021/22 through 2023/24 and establishes the initial values for 2024/25. The results are based on the 2020 capacity model, load model and capacity benefit of ties. (See “IRM Study Results Endorsed,” PJM MRC/MC Briefs: Oct. 29, 2020.)