By Rory D. Sweeney

VALLEY FORGE, Pa. — Calpine and American Electric Power are offering stakeholder alternatives to plans from PJM and its Independent Market Monitor for complying with FERC Order 842, which requires certain generators to provide primary frequency response.

Generation stakeholders have resisted proposals that would require existing units to provide PFR and any mandates that don’t include compensation for the service. (See Stakeholders Oppose PJM PFR Mandate for Existing Units.)

Calpine’s David “Scarp” Scarpignato explained the proposal at a June 19 meeting of the Primary Frequency Response Senior Task Force (PFRSTF). The plan hinges on requiring existing resources that provide PFR to continue doing so, along with the order’s requirement of new resources and any generators that must revise their interconnection agreements after making modifications to their facilities. The plan also calls for allowing any resources that aren’t able to fulfill their obligation to enter bilateral contracting with resources that can.

Units entering into such contracts would have to alert PJM annually. Calpine’s proposal would also require that units be able to both ramp up and down to respond to frequency changes. Just like today, PJM would have the ability to dispatch units to ensure the necessary flexibility of output. Units would also be compensated for their lost opportunity costs, especially during system restoration.

PJM has filed request for clarification on whether Order 842 was meant to include both new and existing resources. The RTO argues it does.

“A lot of the PJM way of doing this thinks that there will be natural headroom on the system,” both up and down, Scarp said. “Those are not my presumptions. Those are the presumptions that must be made under the PJM proposal for it to work. They are not directing anywhere in their proposal to create real-time headroom for primary frequency response. They’re assuming it naturally occurs,” he said. “This proposal is not a small change. It requires a significant amount of work and also encompasses more recordkeeping.”

His plan didn’t contemplate any market transactions beyond the bilateral contracting, he said, because he “didn’t see a ton of dollars” in it, but he would be open to supporting any proposals that do want to address development of a market mechanism.

Locational Issues

In response to criticism that his proposal didn’t address the importance for PFR of units’ geographic location on the grid, Scarp said his proposal, like the others, relied on “expecting diversity of location with new megawatts.”

“I think the locational issue is a significant issue, and it’s not being addressed in the matrix in a very good way under any of the proposals. … I would not be surprised if five years down the road, we reconvene to start talking about locational issues, but right now there are no locational requirements,” he said.

PJM’s Vince Stefanowicz said the RTO’s plan is intended to address locational issues and expressed concern about Calpine’s bilateral contracting idea because during a restoration event, “we really don’t know where the system is going to break up and island,” and “we have to make sure that units in [those] areas have the [PFR] capability.”

Resource connections

Scarp suggested that a second stage of the proposal address units that are interconnected via wholesale market participation agreements (WMPAs), a concern that GT Power Group’s Dave Pratzon also expressed. That phase would examine “not whether to do it [require WMPA resources to provide PFR], but how to do it,” Scarp said.

He said he’d received comments that the package should treat all resources equally, including energy efficiency and demand response, but he acknowledged concerns that adding the necessary inverters to such projects might be infeasible because they don’t inject power into the grid and don’t have WMPAs.

“It seems like a stretch,” CPower’s Bruce Campbell said. “I suspect the commission would consider that a substantive barrier to entry” to require all resources to have to install an inverter, he added. FERC included distributed energy resources in Order 842 because it believed they already needed such inverters, but doing so for DR and EE would be trying to “add capability that just isn’t there,” he said.

“If you require an EE resource to have an inverter, you won’t have any EE resources,” he said.

PJM’s Glen Boyle, who facilitates the PFRSTF, seemed to agree.

“By definition, I don’t know how EE could provide PFR. I don’t know technically if that would be capable,” he said.

AEP Proposal

Under AEP’s proposal, units that already provide PFR would be “encouraged to continue to do so” and can seek compensation at FERC. Units would annually confirm whether they will continue to provide the service, and PJM and transmission owners would revise system restoration plans accordingly.

A company representative attempted to dispel “public assertions by PJM” that AEP’s proposal might “dismiss the important requirement of having primary frequency response during system restoration” by explaining that it “focuses the system restoration conversation where it should be, with transmission owner/operators/PJM and individual generators.”

If a TO discovers it has “inadequate” PFR in its zone, the proposal calls for issuing a request for proposals “so that the most efficient resources, that actually want to provide the service, can participate” in “the most cost-effective mechanism for obtaining services: as needed.” The RFPs would be temporary until enough new units come online or existing units upgrade — both of which would already be required to provide PFR — to mitigate the need.

AEP says PJM’s proposal would force companies to pay to upgrade “resources that are in decline,” namely coal and nuclear, and that prioritizing PFR would limit units’ ability to optimize emissions.

The company touts its proposal as the only one “that recognizes the potential future need of adequate synchronous inertial response,” meaning from resources that have rotating masses such as nuclear, coal- and gas-fired units.

“Did you know that simple cycle [combustion turbines] have less inertial response than a combined cycle CT? Both have much less than a coal unit,” a company presentation said.

AEP says that units can’t change PFR controls based on immediate needs.

“There is no switch! If you want PFR during system restoration, the unit must be tuned to provide it at all times. Re-tuning valves and governor action when there is a restoration event could increase chance of resource tripping significantly,” it said.

The company also criticized what it sees as PJM’s request to “bypass control limits” to optimize its PFR output.

PJM’s Stefanowicz contested that assertion.

“We’re not intending for anybody to bypass any safety functions,” he said. “We’re talking about removing outer loop controls like megawatt set point in a restoration mode and being responsive to frequency. We realize there’s tuning and controls in place to run unit efficiency day in and day out.”

AEP and Scarp agreed that the wording in PJM’s proposal suggests that company should disable any controls that would impact PFR performance, such as emissions controls.

The task force has canceled its planned June 26 meeting but is maintaining one scheduled for July 25. Boyle predicted the agenda will be “fairly light unless we hear something back from FERC in the interim” on PJM’s request for clarification.

Boyle said a stakeholder vote on the proposals would be planned tentatively for a Sept. 26 or Oct. 24 meeting if FERC hasn’t responded.

Scarp endorsed a vote to at least clarify stakeholder positions in the absence of any word from FERC.

“My tolerance is not indefinite. FERC can and might sit on things,” he said.