VALLEY FORGE, Pa. — PJM’s Chris Pilong and Joe Ciabattoni told the Operating Committee last week that the RTO’s generation fleet passed muster during the recent cold snap despite several of the highest winter daily demand peaks it has ever seen.
Pilong reviewed operational events from last month, which included four high system voltage alerts in November and 11 cold weather alerts in December that began on Christmas morning and persisted through to this year. He said it was “probably the longest cold stretch … I’ve seen,” but that “everything went very smoothly.”
“Our system operators were able to do a great job thanks to your operators,” he said.
The evening peak load of 138,465 MW on Jan. 5 came within 5,250 MW of PJM’s winter peak record set on Feb. 20, 2015. Throughout the first week of the year, coal generation accounted for nearly 40% of the output, with nuclear and gas each producing about a quarter of the supply, which Pilong called “a fairly consistent story for the fuel mix.”
He acknowledged there was “a higher volume of oil than would typically be seen” at between 9,000 and 14,000 MW for the week, caused by gas-fired units switching to alternative oil supplies.
“The higher gas prices [were] making coal and oil a little more economic,” he said.
Unplanned outages hovered around 8% until the wind picked up at the end of the week and unplanned outages increased to 22,906 MW, or 11.5%, on Jan. 6, Ciabattoni said. Of that, 9,220 MW (40%) were gas units with operating problems and 3,143 MW (14%) were gas units reporting supply issues. Except for Midwestern hubs around Chicago, gas prices throughout the RTO spiked to more than $80/MMBtu on Jan. 5, with some above $120/MMBtu. The data were preliminary and came from PJM’s eDART self-reporting system. RTO staff communicate with unit operators to confirm the details of reported issues, Ciabattoni said.
PJM’s Manual 13 anticipates that 8,000 to 10,000 MW of forced outages are expected during such conditions, Pilong said. There was a “similar uptick” during the 2014 situation often referred to as the “polar vortex,” he said, but the difference was that there was really “no advanced notice” in 2014. Staff had to call on 2 MW of generation for every 1 actually needed, he said, because “it was a 50/50 shot that we would get it.”
“So even two hours’ notice allows us to change our plans,” he said.
Ciabattoni noted that December outages — both generation and transmission — were down slightly year-over-year. The load forecasting error was higher than December 2016 — 2.54% on-peak and 2.18% off-peak compared to 2.09% and 2.14%, respectively — but the RTO average error of 2.36% was still within the 3% target. There was an outlier of nearly 5% on Dec. 22.
“Is 3% right [as the target]? I’m not sure that it is, but we’ve been using it for a while,” PJM’s Mike Bryson said in response to a stakeholder question, adding that “we’re very open to using another metric.”
Staff explained that the calculation is the compilation of the absolute value of the error between each day’s hourly peak and the forecast from eight hours previous. Forecast development begins up to seven days ahead of time with wind chill and other weather expectations and can be adjusted up to an hour ahead of delivery.
Balancing authority area control error limit (BAAL) performance remained at 99.8% from November through December. Both the number and total time of excursions outside the target limits were near yearly lows in December.
Black Start RFP Opens in February
PJM’s David Schweizer discussed the timeline for the RTO’s five-year black start request for proposals, which will open Feb. 1 with a pre-bid web conference scheduled for Feb. 6. Participants will have until March 8 to submit basic proposals, on which PJM will provide responses by March 30.
“We’re looking very heavily at fuel assurance as an evaluation component,” Schweizer said.
Final proposals will be due May 31, and Schweizer said applicants should expect to start seeing awards soon thereafter.
“We’re going to do a lot of this [analysis] in parallel, so we’re not going to get to the end and post the awards,” he said. “We will award the black start service as we run through the plans.”
Generation Transfer Seen as Overly Lengthy
Stakeholders endorsed changes to how generation ownership is transferred despite a concern about PJM’s requirement that owners submit initial information 45 days ahead of the transfer.
PJM’s Rebecca Stadelmeyer, who is overseeing the proposed changes, estimated that the initial information is about 65% of the amount needed for the RTO to ensure “what the member is seeking to do is reflected in our systems.” She said she wanted to avoid last-minute problems.
“That has occurred more than I want to count,” she said.
Chris O’Hara, PJM deputy general counsel, said 45 days is “a rational amount.”
“It’s not as simple as switching a toggle switch on an account,” he said.
Committee Changes
Ken Seiler, who chairs the OC, is switching jobs with Paul McGlynn, who chairs the Planning Committee. February will be Seiler’s last month chairing the OC. Dave Souder will then run the committee until McGlynn takes over.
— Rory D. Sweeney