VALLEY FORGE, Pa. — PJM’s Darlene Phillips will take over the Operating Committee in July after current Chairman Dave Souder starts his new role as executive director of systems operations.

Phillips is currently the senior director of strategic policy and external affairs and joined PJM in August 2015. She served in several leadership roles for MISO for more than 10 years and is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Indiana University’s Robert H. McKinney School of Law.

Souder’s promotion comes after a leadership shake-up following CEO Andy Ott’s retirement, effective June 30. (See PJM CEO Ott to Retire.) He will take over the role for Ken Seiler, who will become vice president of planning and be responsible for the oversight of the System Planning Division, which includes transmission planning, interregional planning, interconnection analysis, interconnection projects, infrastructure coordination and resource adequacy planning.

Tornadoes Knock Out Tx Lines

PJM said a wave of tornadoes on Memorial Day and throughout the last week of May left about 80,000 customers without power around Dayton, Ohio.

Half the customers were restored within 12 hours, staff said, but several transmission lines remain inoperable due to storm damage. PJM expects the lines will be under repair through the end of June.

Energy Storage Revisions Get First Read

Revisions to PJM manuals for energy storage mandates got a first read during Tuesday’s OC meeting. PJM staff said the changes follow directives from FERC Order 841.

First up were changes to Manual 14D: Generator Operational Requirements, including Operating Agreement definitions of energy resource, capacity resource, energy storage resource (ESR) and capacity storage resource. Language was also added to clarify applicability of manual requirements to generation and storage resources. Sections 4.1.7 and 4.2.3 were revised to include telemetry of state of charge for ESR model participants and specific metering requirements. Staff also added a definition for generating facility per FERC’s compliance filing for Order 845.

In Manual 36: System Restoration, PJM revised the exception to critical cranking power to include non-hydro energy storage resources and updated the participation model to allow ESRs to participate in all markets where technically feasible.

In Manual 40: Training and Certification Requirements, sections 3.2.4 and 3.2.6 were updated to account for small generation resource dispatchers and lower the megawatt threshold for training requirements to accommodate ESRs. Language was also changed to reflect ESRs are assumed to be more than participants in ancillary markets.

Laura Walter, a senior lead economist for PJM, said the purpose of the revisions — and many more anticipated in other manuals — is to open up markets for ESRs and ensure parameters allow such resources to operate effectively.

PJM’s ESRs include approximately 5,000 MW of pumped hydro and 310 MW of battery storage, she said. The resources will be allowed to offer into both the day-ahead and real-time markets and will be modeled as continuous resources with the ability to self-manage their own state of charge.

The manual revisions will return to the September OC for final endorsement to give stakeholders time to provide additional feedback.

Nuclear Plant Interface Coordination Updates

PJM wants to update Manual 39 with new sections and clarifying language for its nuclear plant interface coordination procedures.

The revisions include new language in sections 2.7, 3.6 and 3.7 that address coordination around remedial action schemes and load shedding schemes. They also cover the deactivation and retirement process for nuclear units and the regulatory requirements of that process, as well as the coordination between reliability coordinators when a non-PJM member is identified by a nuclear plant generator operator as a transmission entity.

Attachment B will also be renamed to “Plant Specific NPIRs.” Endorsement is scheduled for the July OC.

Emergency Operations Updates

Staff added multiple section changes to Manual 13: Emergency Operations to align with the new Markets Gateway functionality for resource limitation reporting to be implemented on Aug. 1.

Sections 1.1, 2.3, 3.1-3.5 and 5.2 have been revised to reflect the following:

• Terminology for “fuel-limited” units has changed to “resource-limited” to clarify applicability of reporting requirements.
• Units are considered resource-limited if they have less than 72 hours of remaining runtime at maximum capacity, limited by primary/alternate on-site fuel, emissions, demineralized or cooling water or other consumables.
• Resource-limited units are to report resource limitations via the new Markets Gateway page.
• Natural gas-fired units with fuel limitations are not considered resource-limited and are excluded from resource limitation reporting via the Markets Gateway.
• References to the Supplementary Status Report (SSR) for reporting resource limitations have been removed and replaced with instructions for using the new Markets Gateway page.

In Section 6.4, clarifications were made to address procedures when PJM has declared conservative operations or hot/cold weather alerts:

• Fuel-limited gas-fired units are not to be placed in maximum emergency but should remain available to ensure PJM tools “economically schedule” the gas-fired units, unless PJM Dispatch directs them to be placed in maximum emergency dispatch status.
• Dual fuel units — gas/other on-site fuel — should be placed in maximum emergency status when non-fuel resource limitations restrict runtime to less than 16 hours for combustion turbines and 32 hours for steam turbines. When fuel is limited, they should be placed in maximum emergency status only when natural gas is unavailable and their onsite fuel inventory is less than 16 hours for CTs and 32 hours for steam.

The changes were made to align with existing language in the PJM Operating Agreement for designating fuel-limited resources as maximum emergency.

First Primary Frequency Response Evaluation Reveals Low Participation

Most online resources don’t provide primary frequency response (PFR), a PJM analysis concluded.

PFR is the ability of generators to automatically change their output in five to 15 seconds when the grid’s frequency strays above or below 60 Hz. As more renewables enter the resource mix and coal plants retire, the grid can become more susceptible to these frequency swings, threatening system reliability.

Danielle Croop, a senior engineer in PJM’s generation department, said 583 units with capacities of 50 MW or greater were evaluated for PFR across five events in late 2018 and early 2019. The selected events for analysis met one of three qualifications: frequency goes outside the +/- 40-mHz deadband, frequency stays outside the +/- 40-mHz deadband for 60 continuous seconds or minimum/maximum frequency reaches +/- 53 mHz.

No more than 20 resources provided PFR during the selected events, PJM data show. More than half remained offline and another third did not respond, Croop said. When pressed as to whether the analysis meant generators were performing poorly, she said only that clearly more follow-up is needed to fully understand why units did not respond as anticipated.

“I will say there is a concern here because we looked at 583 units, and the majority of them are not responding,” she said.

BTM Generation Rules Preview

PJM will soon bring rule changes for non-retail behind-the-meter generation (NRBTMG) to the OC for endorsement.

NRBTMG refers to resources used by municipal electric systems, electric cooperatives or electric distribution companies to serve load. They do not participate as supply resources in PJM markets but can be netted against their wholesale load to reduce transmission, capacity, ancillary services and administrative fee charges.

PJM’s rules on such resources resulted from a 2005 settlement agreement (EL05-127), before development of the RTO’s capacity market and CP constructs. NRBTMG resources can be called upon during the first 10 maximum generation emergencies annually, while CP resources are required to perform during all performance assessment intervals (PAIs). BTM operators that fail to perform face reduced netting benefits. In 2006, the grid operator identified about 400 MW of NRBTMG.

Terri Esterly, PJM’s senior lead engineer for capacity market operations, said manual changes are ready for stakeholder review. The revisions grew out of a problem statement and issue charge that showed PJM can’t accurately account for how much NRBTMG contributes to the grid, particularly with the growth of solar and other distributed resources. (See “PJM Continues Review of Non-retail BTM Generation Business Rules,” PJM OC Briefs: Feb. 5, 2019.)

Updates to Manual 13 show the phrases “maximum generation emergency action” and “deploy all resource action” have been identified as triggers to load NRBTMG. Updates to Manual 14D Appendix A include revisions to the business rules to clarify the reporting, netting and operational requirements of NRBTMG.

— Christen Smith