Wilmington to be Retired as Meeting Site

WILMINGTON, Del. — The city will be retired as the meeting site for the Markets and Reliability and the Members committees, PJM stakeholders agreed Thursday with a sector-weighted vote of 3.74 to 1.26.

Katie Guerry of Enel X first proposed relocating future meetings to PJM’s Conference and Training Center in Valley Forge, Pa., at the Feb. 21 Members Committee meeting, noting the center provides stakeholders cost efficiencies, as they have access to PJM staff and resources while there. (See “Stakeholders to Consider Retiring Wilmington as Meeting Site,” PJM MRC/MC Briefs: Feb. 21, 2019.)

MC Chair Chuck Dugan, of East Kentucky Power Cooperative, said notice of when the location change will take effect will be given to members in the coming weeks. “We have some contracts to cancel,” he explained, referring to the Chase Center on the Riverfront, the current venue for meetings in the city.

Emotional Farewell for CFO Suzanne Daugherty

Members presented PJM CFO Suzanne Daugherty with a signed plaque of recognition and gratitude for her two decades of service at the RTO just days before her anticipated retirement.

During her last time serving as chair of the MRC, Daugherty tearfully bid farewell to members, saying she’s “enjoyed working with every single one of you.”

PJM staff and members alike commended Daugherty for her commitment to the RTO over the years and said they were sorry to see her leave.

“They say where you stand on a particular issue depends on where you sit,” said Stu Bresler, senior vice president of operations and markets. “With respect to where Suzanne stood, it was equally consistent. The direction was always ‘Do the right thing,’ and the remainder of the conversation was ‘How do we get there?’

“If you are looking for a role model … it’d be challenge to find anyone better than Suzanne Daugherty,” he added.

Daugherty announced in February she would retire on April 1 after 20 years with PJM. The decision follows months of recriminations by stakeholders over credit policies that allowed a small trading shop to default on more than $100 million in financial transmission rights losses. (See PJM CFO Retiring in Wake of GreenHat Default.) She never connected her announcement to the GreenHat Energy fallout, rather saying she timed it to coincide with her husband’s retirement.

The Board of Managers’ report on PJM’s handling of the GreenHat incident is expected to be released this week.

Fix for Deficiency Cure Periods OK’d

Stakeholders unanimously approved a quick fix to prevent transmission customers from falling out of the interconnection queue because of minor errors.

They endorsed revisions to Manual 14A: New Services Request Process and the Open Access Transmission Tariff that would give customers 10 days to fix minor errors in their requests, no matter whether they submit their application on the first or last day of the new services request window. (See “Quick Fix for Queue Filing Errors Endorsed,” PJM PC/TEAC Briefs: Feb. 7, 2019.)

The change will be effective with queue AF1, which opens April 1.

Manuals Endorsed

The MRC endorsed the following manual changes:

B. Manual 13: Emergency Operations: Updates language to align with both NERC EOP-004-4 and OE-417 reporting requirements in Attachment J, relating to disturbance reporting.

C. Manual 20: Resource Adequacy Analysis: Cover-to-cover periodic review includes minor grammatical corrections and updated language to reflect implementation of Capacity Performance. Removes references to demand resource factor and deletes sections 5 and 6, which relate to demand response reliability target analysis procedures and limited-availability resource constraint procedures, respectively.

D. Manual 37: Reliability Coordination: Periodic cover-to-cover review that includes minor grammatical updates and annual changes to transmission owner designations. Adds PJM’s Reliability Plan to attachment A and updates appendix D to include AMP Transmission as a TO.