VALLEY FORGE, Pa. — PJM staff told attendees at last week’s Operating Committee meeting that they are looking at ways to improve operations after reviewing the grid’s performance during January.

PJM’s Donnie Bielak and Joe Ciabattoni noted that the Tier 1 response to three spinning events during the cold snap that started the month before were substantially below the RTO’s estimates. At least 400 MW that were expected didn’t respond during each of the events, with as many as 1,660 MW failing to respond to a Jan. 7 event.

PJM has two tiers of reserves that are triggered sequentially when its dispatch software calculates a potential generation shortage. The Tier 2 response was much closer to the need. All estimated megawatts responded for two of the events.

Bielak said there are “preliminary discussions” internally regarding changes to address the issue and that “nothing is imminent,” but Calpine’s David “Scarp” Scarpignato called it “a pretty significant pricing issue” if anticipated reserves that never materialize are preventing scarcity pricing from triggering.

“I think this is going to need larger investigation by PJM and reporting out what you think the drivers of some of these numbers are,” he said.

Ciabattoni said staff did their normal outreach to the worst performers and found three main issues: poor communication from units’ market operation centers so they didn’t know to respond; “unrealistic” ramp rates attributable to equipment being out of service at the time; and spin max settings that were based on incorrect configurations.

“Our estimates are only as good as the data we get from our members,” he said. “When we did the outreach, we did find that there were data-quality issues.”

“These are bad estimates at the most critical time for scarcity pricing. Scarcity pricing is supposed to kick in during these conservative ops,” Scarp said.

Generators are addressing their issues, Ciabattoni said, and PJM is considering rule revisions to allow for raising the output target dispatchers send to units, known as the base point.

“PJM doesn’t change our base point when we go into a spinning event, so there’s not a direct signal to tell the unit to load,” Ciabattoni said.

Direct Energy’s Marji Philips asked why there were about 100 more planned outages than any other month in the past year.

“Both forced outage rates and total outage rates were elevated, and that’s primarily due to the cold weather we experienced in the first week of January,” Ciabattoni said.

He explained that if an operator needed to take an unplanned, or forced, outage but can wait until “a more opportune time, then we grant you what’s called a maintenance outage,” which is categorized as a planned outage.

The RTO’s off-peak load forecasting error of 2.79% in January was the highest in more than a year. The on-peak error was 2.38%, both of which were increased by the cold weather, Ciabattoni said. Their combined average of 2.58% was still well within PJM’s 3% monthly target threshold. The largest outlier was 7,000 MW on Jan. 15, which was the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday, he said.

“Our model treats that as a holiday. In the past, that’s worked very well for us. This year, the load actually came in more like a normal workweek.”

The RTO also estimated no production cost savings from its “perfect dispatch” initiative for the first time since the cold streak during January 2014 known as the “polar vortex” and the second time ever in the 10 years PJM has been tracking the metric. Over those 10 years, PJM estimates its efforts to accurately forecast demand and dispatch generation as economically as possible has saved more than $1.4 billion in production costs.

PJM’s Ken Seiler said the RTO is compiling a report on grid performance during the winter that will be available by the end of this week.

Task Force on Mandating Primary Frequency Response Nearing Solution

PJM’s Glen Boyle announced that stakeholders have presented five proposals to address FERC’s requirement that most generation units be able to provide primary frequency response. The proposals are focused on four components: an exception process, an implementation plan, how performance will be measured and how units will be compensated. Stakeholders have differed on whether the service is already included in the compensation units receive in auction commitments or should receive separate compensation. (See PJM IMM Opposes Frequency Response Payment Bid.)

Stakeholders will vote on the packages after the task force’s next meeting on Feb. 28 and any that receive 50% endorsement will move on for consideration at the Markets and Reliability Committee. Boyle said few stakeholders have expressed much interest, so wider participation would be “appreciated.”

Lack of Adjustment Requests a Surprise

PJM’s Alpa Jani reminded stakeholders that the deadline for unit-specific parameter adjustment requests is Feb. 28 and expressed surprise at the lack of requests so far. She said the RTO expected many more requests from new base and Capacity Performance resources this year that haven’t materialized.

The process allows CP, base or replacement resources to submit adjustments to their commitments based on an actual operating constraint. Any newly approved adjustments will go into effect on June 1, while any existing ones will roll over from previous years.

Super Bowl Impact

Seiler was able to compile some analysis from energy demand during Super Bowl LII on Feb. 4. There was a 750-MW increase in load just prior to the start of the game, he said, and another 700-MW bump at halftime.

“There must have been a commercial that was kind of boring, so we saw another 200-MW jump about 30 minutes later,” he said, and then another 500-MW spike after the game.

Operators could tell the game was good because the load tails off quickly during bad games and the spikes don’t occur throughout the game, he said.

Black Start RFP

Staff held a special session of the OC after the meeting to walk through its request for proposals for black start service. The RTO initiates a black start RFP process every five years. The current request was issued on Feb. 1 for projects expected to be operational around May 2020.

PJM has developed a two-tiered approach for proposals to balance the resources proposed by bidders with staff’s need to see what is available across the RTO’s footprint without specifying where black start is needed. Initial proposals with basic information must be submitted by March 8. PJM would then decide whether to pursue that proposal, and those bidders would have until May 31 to submit a full, detailed proposal.

Units would receive revenue based on their actual costs to develop the project, plus a 10% profit margin.

— Rory D. Sweeney