TEMPE, Ariz. — It’s been two months since Peak Reliability announced it will be winding down its operations at the end of 2019, but the issue won’t recede into the background any time soon, Western Electricity Coordinating Council members heard last week at the group’s annual meeting.
Just the opposite: Industry participants must now race the clock to ensure the Western Interconnection makes a smooth transition into a new era of balkanized reliability coordinator (RC) coverage.
“The hot topic of the day, and will be for the coming months … is the RC issue,” CEO Melanie Frye told the WECC board of directors Wednesday, the same day she revealed that CAISO is slated to provide RC service to about 72% of the West’s net energy load. (See CAISO RC Wins Most of the West.)
“Count me among those heartsick at what’s going on with Peak,” said Brian Theaker, director of market affairs at NRG Energy who also sits on WECC’s Member Advisory Committee (MAC). “I mean, we spent all this effort to put together the West-wide, interconnection-wide view, only to have it unravel like this, and I’m still just shaking my head from it.”
“I know that the Eastern Interconnection operates with multiple reliability coordinators … and the lights don’t go out,” said NERC Trustee Roy Thilly, who said NERC’s board has asked for a report on developments related to the RC issue at each of its meetings. “But the transition, I suspect, creates its own set of issues that we need to watch very carefully. We don’t want any gaps, no communication failures; and the structure has got to work in terms of the geography.”
Here’s more of what RTO Insider heard during the event about what Thilly jokingly referred to as “the little thing called the Western reliability coordinator set of issues.”
Transparency, Independency
David Ortiz, acting director of FERC’s Office of Electric Reliability, noted that the West consists of a network of load connected by a “relatively sparse” transmission network compared with the eastern U.S.
“The result is a system in which disturbances here in Arizona can be felt immediately in Washington,” Ortiz said, pointing out the region has deployed a collection of wide-area remedial actions schemes to support transmission operations. “Perhaps more than any region, maintaining reliability in the West does require a wide-area view.”
He said a successful RC transition will entail more than just the new RCs assuming Peak’s key functions. “This also requires that transmission operators and balancing authorities throughout the West work hand in hand with their reliability coordinators to maintain reliability.”
WECC members representing consumers expressed concerns that the new RC arrangement will be less transparent and provide them reduced input into reliability issues.
Maury Galbraith, executive director of the Western Interstate Energy Board (WIEB), previously told RTO Insider that WIEB has special concerns about how CAISO is proposing to govern its new RC. He noted that, unlike at Peak, CAISO’s member advisory committee would consist only of industry representatives. Also, CAISO does not plan to open RC meetings to the public, nor would meeting notes be made available to the public.
At the WECC meeting, Galbraith told WECC board members that WIEB’s Western Interconnection Regional Advisory Body (WIRAB) has submitted written comments to CAISO focusing on concerns about “transparent” and “independent” decision-making by the proposed RC, and a meaningful role for WIRAB to provide input and advice on RC activities.
Galbraith noted that WIRAB representatives had recently met with CAISO officials about their concerns, “and I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to resolve some of these governance issues with the folks at the Cal-ISO in the next several weeks.”
David Clark, a Utah Public Service Commissioner who also sits on both the WECC MAC and WIRAB, said state regulators have become accustomed to “an approach to RC coordination that has given us a lot of opportunity to participate, to observe, to gain comfort with the independence that’s been evident and the schemes that are used to remediate troubling — even threatening — conditions. In the future, we’re going to have a much different model, and we want to make sure that we don’t lose sight of some key principles as this new model evolves.”
Clark said those who have a statutory obligation to represent the interests of electricity customers “want some means of assuring ourselves that the daily, hourly, even minute-by-minute coordination is occurring effectively, independently of any improper influence. So we need transparency to be able to achieve that level of comfort.”
“We think WIRAB has an important role to play in this, and so we’re looking for WIRAB to be able to advise whoever is setting the policy for the reliability coordination function,” Clark added.
MAC representative Fred Heutte, of the Northwest Energy Coalition, said WECC end-use members seek “an appropriate role” for providing “broader input” into oversight of the region’s multiple RCs. “Not so much about the details, or about issues related to management of multiple RCs. But rather, what’s the appropriate role for the non-BA, non-TO stakeholders in the RC process.”
“That will be quite a bit different than what we’ve seen with Peak with member class representation and an independent board and a MAC and all that. The structures that will be in the new RCs will be quite different, but we think the same themes are involved,” Heutte said.
‘Clarity of Communication’
A guest panel on how reliability coordination works in the Eastern Interconnection — with its multiple RCs — pointed to the need for a different kind of transparency.
MISO seams management expert Ron Arness pointed out that his RTO coordinates its reliability activities with eight RCs.
“Transparency [into neighboring areas] is important,” Arness said, emphasizing the importance of “clarity of communications,” managing loop flows and developing congestion management tools. He also emphasized the importance of accurate internal and external models and performing drills to test coordination.
“It’s necessary to have a wide view,” Arness said.
Cameron Warren, manager of transmission operational planning at Entergy, noted that his utility joined MISO’s market and RC services in 2013 after functioning as its own RC since 1998. He offered a piece of advice to his Western counterparts facing the switch to a new RC.
“You’re moving to a company that’s not as familiar with your territory as you are,” Warren said. “Training is key.”
Lorissa Jones, of the Bonneville Power Administration, asked whether outage coordination policies are aligned throughout the East.
Yes, Arness answered. “It is important that outages are coordinated and communicated,” he said. “That clarity of communication is important here.”
WIRAB’s Galbraith asked how MISO provides transmission congestion relief to its neighbors that don’t participate in organized markets. Arness pointed to the RTO’s use of the transmission loading relief process.
“It does not take economics into account” in dispatch orders, instead functioning “purely on a reliability basis,” Arness explained.
“Is there some sort of higher-level forum where RCs from the Eastern Interconnection get together to collaborate and talk about interconnection-wide models or broader issues that affect more than one RTO or TOP?” Frye asked.
“I’m not aware of an official NERC organization that deals with the coordination of [energy management system] models, but people — like myself — we have a communication process,” Arness responded. “We’ve worked out a process where [MISO’s RC function knows] when MISO updates models, and we have to know when our neighbor updates their models, and we have to know how MISO’s going to get a copy of those models and know what those changes are. So that’s a structure and a process that’s built-in. It’s paramount.”
WECC board Chair Kris Hafner asked what the West should do — or avoid — as it transitions to multiple RCs.
Warren pointed to the importance of “having the RCs get together, communicate, lay out the operating agreements on how they’re going to manage any congestion that’s going to impact one utility or another. And ensuring that they go into it with a true wide-area view.”
Arness reiterated the importance of clear communication.
“Make sure clarity of communication is in place not only within the reliability coordination entity and all the various people that are working on reliability coordination, but also with neighbors. … Have the coordination agreements in place that spell out that that’s going to occur.”
— Robert Mullin
