WILMINGTON, Del. — The MRC endorsed the following Thursday:

• Manual 11: Energy & Ancillary Services Market Operations — Updates manual to include a method for screening of demand bids by load-serving entities, as approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in November (ER14-2976). Bids are limited to the LSE’s calculated zonal peak demand reference point for the day plus whichever value is more, 30% of the reference point or 10 MW. PJM said the need for such limits was illustrated by the default of a retail provider in January 2014 after it mistakenly entered a demand bid about 100 times its actual load. (See MIC Briefs.)

Marji Phillips of Direct Energy said the change is requiring her company to confirm its loads daily by phone with Pepco Holdings Inc. because of problems with Pepco’s electronic system. “Every day, we have no idea whether we will be able to meet the obligations we have to meet,” she said. “It is killing all the LSEs in the Pepco area — Delaware, New Jersey, D.C. It’s a tremendous problem.”

• Manual 12: Balancing Operations — Revisions describe the required regulation range, specifying that resources are required to symmetrically provide the total amount of regulation assigned. The changes also detail how performance evaluations are conducted and further define the basepoint around which the resource will be regulating.
• Non-substantive revisions regarding financial transmission rights. The changes concern clearing deadlines, bilateral trades and Tariff references.
• A change to demand response modeling assumptions used in load deliverability analyses for the Regional Transmission Expansion Plan. The new method would use the average of the last three years of committed DR for each zone. (See Change Proposed in PJM Demand Response Modeling.)

Revisions to Manual 18 Address Capacity Performance

The MRC discussed manual changes needed to implement PJM’s Capacity Performance proposal, which is pending before FERC (EL15-29). The proposal would penalize underperforming units and reward those that over-perform. (See PJM Defends Capacity Performance Proposal; Drops Change for LSEs.)

The revisions, which affect Manual 18: PJM Capacity Market, would allow capacity resources to avoid performance penalties by requesting approval of retroactive replacement transactions within three business days after a delivery day that includes a performance assessment hour.

That would allow a participant with over-performing uncommitted capacity to replace underperforming committed capacity in the same account, Vice President of Market Operations Stu Bresler said.

Market Monitor Joe Bowring said the changes present an opportunity for economic withholding. “It is an incentive to withhold, and that is one of our concerns,” he said.

Members will be asked to endorse the revisions at the next MRC meeting if FERC has approved the proposal by then.

Members Committee

CTS Product, Fee for $20M-plus Projects Approved

The Members and Markets and Reliability committees endorsed a $30,000 non-refundable fee for studying proposed transmission improvements with estimated costs of $20 million or more. The fee, which PJM would evaluate for two years, would apply to both greenfield projects and upgrades by incumbent transmission operators. FERC last month rejected an earlier proposal to exempt transmission upgrades from the study fee. (See FERC Rejects Fee on Greenfield Transmission Projects.)

The MC also endorsed Tariff and Operating Agreement revisions to implement Coordinated Transaction Scheduling (CTS) with MISO. The objective is to improve interchange scheduling efficiency by aligning energy scheduling with interface prices and adding the option for market participants to schedule energy transactions using an interface bid. (See PJM, MISO Reach Agreement on New Interchange Product.)

 — Suzanne Herel