Dominion and PPL will remove three Special Protection Schemes (SPS) while Dominion will add one, PJM told the Planning Committee last week.

Dominion will operate an SPS to control stability at its Bath County pump storage facility to continue operation during the Dooms – Lexington rebuilding project.

The pump storage facility has six generating and pumping units totaling about 3,000 MW. An existing Bath County/Cloverdale SPS is designed to trip either one or two Bath County pumps if the flows on the Cloverdale 6A/6B transformers exceed their temperature-adjusted emergency ratings.

The Dooms – Lexington 500 kV line will be taken out of service about September 2014 for a wreck and rebuild baseline project (b1908). Existing stability restrictions would restrict generation and pumping at Bath to two units, removing about 2000 MW of capacity. The new SPS (PJM Baseline Project b2281) will allow operation of up to five units.

The SPS will not be armed if there are any other 500 kV outages in the vicinity. PJM will determine how many units at Bath will be armed for the SPS based on the operating status of the Bath units (i.e., pumping, generating or condensing).

The target date for completion of the rebuilding project, and removal of the SPS, is June 1, 2016.

The three SPSs being removed are:

• Dominion Harmony Village SPS:  The SPS was installed in 2007 to prevent an overload on line #65 during loss of towers carrying lines #2016 and #85. The completion of a new 230 kV line (#2122) from Hayes to Yorktown (B0779) in December 2012 eliminates the need for the scheme.
• Dominion Virginia Beach SPS: The SPS was installed in 2007 to prevent line #27 from overloading as the only feed to Virginia Beach due to loss of two other feeds. The completion of a 230 kV line (#2118) from Landstown to Virginia Beach (S0375) in December 2012 eliminates the need for scheme.

PPL West Shore 230 KV Automatic Load Shedding SPS: SPS B0718 was installed in 2010 to alleviate an N-1-1 summer peak overload condition at the Steelton Tap on the Hummelstown-Middletown Junction #2 230 kV line. A second Brunner Island – West Shore 230 KV line (B0717) went in-service recently, eliminating the need for the SPS.