NYISO CEO Richard Dewey informed the Management Committee on Wednesday that Sept. 1 is the earliest date on which in-person stakeholder meetings would resume, but that the ISO will wait until later to decide.

“We continue to look at infection rates,” Dewey said in response to a stakeholder question about when pandemic restrictions might be lifted.

Dewey also reminded participants that the ISO’s semiannual performance survey is out and ready to be completed. He also asked stakeholders to RSVP by May 14 for the joint Board of Directors/MC meeting in June.

2021 Summer Capacity Deemed Adequate

New York will experience its first summer after the retirement of the 1,040-MW Indian Point Unit 3 with capacity to spare, Vice President of Operations Wes Yeomans said in delivering the 2021 summer capacity assessment. At 50/50 baseline peak weather conditions, NYISO this summer is projecting 1,344 MW of capacity margin surplus, a decrease of 377 MW over last year’s baseline forecast.

“Common sense would say you’d expect about 1,000 MW derate because of Indian Point 3, but as a result of a few other small wind farms and some additional purchases as projected in the capacity market, the surplus is really only dropping by 377 MW for this summer,” Yeomans said.

At extreme weather conditions — the 90th percentile forecast — the ISO projects -860 MW of capacity margin surplus, a decrease of 456 MW compared to the 2020 extreme weather forecast. This is the projected capacity margin below the 90th percentile load plus 2,620 MW of operating reserves, he said.

“We’ve had negative projected capacity margins for the 90th percentile weather before, so that is minus 860 MW relative to the reserve requirement on top of the 90/10 peak load; but there are emergency actions we can take, and [we] have market systems that may be able to schedule additional non-[capacity market] imports that will certainly help to mitigate this,” Yeomans said.

Emergency operating procedures may provide up to 3,258 MW of relief in 90/10 conditions, he said.

“This assessment from the Operations Department is really utilizing a deterministic approach for what we think our capacity margins will be for 50/50 and 90/10 weather conditions, along with the margin as calculated above and beyond reserve requirements,” Yeomans said.

Emergency operating procedures start with 4 MW of emergency demand response measures outside the capacity market; voltage reductions from utilities totaling 605 MW; voluntary industrial curtailments at 259 MW; general public appeals at 80 MW; emergency purchases at 1,000 MW; and the 30-minute reserves to zero procedure for 1,310 MW.

The amount of emergency purchases is a rough estimate that depends on the ISO’s external transmission capability at the time of the peak or tight conditions, and of what excess capacity neighboring regions have available to sell out of their reserves, Yeomans said.