NYISO CEO Rich Dewey informed the Management Committee on Wednesday that the ISO in early March had completed its annual stakeholder sector meetings for this year with good input and participation, which was shared on a high level with the Board of Directors. He also announced that the joint board/MC meeting in June will again be a virtual event.
“The next iteration of our market participant survey will be going out soon, and I personally read verbatim every one of the comments,” Dewey added.
Responding to a stakeholder, Dewey said he has heard nothing about the timing of the NYISO-specific technical conference that FERC announced at the March 23 conference on capacity markets. That event featured a broad discussion on PJM’s, NYISO’s and ISO-NE’s markets, but it mostly focused on PJM. The commission said it would hold individual technical conferences for both NYISO and ISO-NE in the future. (See PJM MOPR in the Crosshairs at FERC Tech Conference.)
Winter Operations Went Well
Vice President of Operations Wes Yeomans delivered the Winter 2020/21 Cold Weather Operations report, which showed a seasonal peak load of 22,542 MW on Dec. 16, compared with a seasonal 50/50 forecast of 24,130 MW. NYISO’s all-time winter peak load was 25,738 MW on Jan. 7, 2014.
“For the most part we did not have a single, brutal cold snap or a long sustained cold snap,” Yeomans said. “To explain the difference between the forecast and the peak, we simply did not have 50/50 weather, but if we had, I imagine the seasonal peak would have been very close to the forecast.”
The Dec. 16 snowfall exceeded that morning’s forecasts by 1 to 2 feet, and the storm proved to be the eighth largest in Albany history and the fourth largest December snowstorm.
The ISO ran the day-ahead forecast on Dec. 15, and as the day proceeded, transmission owners saw the possibility of exceeding the 50/50 forecast peak and thus issued a supplemental resource evaluation (SRE) request for Cricket Valley CC3 on Dec. 16. Transmission owners may request NYISO to issue an SRE to commit additional resources for reliability purposes in a local area.
Natural gas pipelines in New York and throughout the Northeast are running at high capacity factors, as was made evident in the second week of February when colder weather saw a flurry of operational flow orders (OFOs), both daily and hourly, Yeomans said.
On days when gas system reliability could be at risk, the local distribution company or a gas pipeline may invoke an OFO or issue other instructions restricting use of gas imbalance service. Under extreme circumstances, interruptible customers may also have their gas service interrupted to protect gas system reliability.
“The natural gas infrastructure in New York remained in service throughout the winter, yet a number of OFOs were reported on days not identified as particularly cold,” Yeomans said. “We hope to bring more information on that situation to an upcoming OC meeting.”
NYISO is following the FERC-NERC joint inquiry into the February winter storm in ERCOT and SPP, and it intends to review all findings and consider best practices and recommendations as appropriate, Yeomans said.