VALLEY FORGE, Pa. — PJM provided more details last week on the April 21-22 transmission outage that resulted in the dispatch of demand response in the Erie area.

PJM’s Joe Ciabattoni told the Operating Committee that early on April 21, one of the three feeds into the Erie area, located in the PENELEC zone, was on a scheduled outage when a circuit breaker failed, taking one of the remaining paths out of service.

“That resulted in severe low voltage in a load pocket of about 200 MW,” he said. “If we had lost a third feed in the area, we would have lost that load pocket.” Ciabattoni noted at last week’s Market Implementation Committee meeting, where the matter also was discussed, that there always are voltage concerns in that area when there are planned or unplanned outages, and that an upgrade is included in next year’s Regional Transmission Expansion Plan.

When a workaround to bypass the breaker did not come to pass, PJM issued a PENELEC zone-wide voluntary call for DR to alleviate some of the voltage violations and implemented a switching solution, he said, estimating the DR available that evening at 130 MW.

“Going through the midnight period, we lost some generation in the area, which further aggravated the situation,” Ciabattoni said, so a voluntary call for DR again was made the following morning, when an estimated 73 MW was available. Because the outage occurred during a non-compliance period, all of the response was voluntary.

A sub-zonal call for DR was not made, he told the MIC, because it would have required a prior-day’s notice.

The event sparked the creation of two new closed-loop pricing interfaces in order to capture the DR dispatch in LMPs rather than in uplift — ERIE-PN, which is within the PENELEC zone, and the entire zone itself.

However, Stu Bresler, PJM vice president of market operations, told the MIC that PJM would not have let DR set prices for the full zone because the issue was isolated to the Erie area.

Black Start Service Undergoes Annual Revenue Recalculation

Black start generators are in the process of requesting changes to their annual revenue requirements, reflecting adjustments to net cost of new entry, operations and maintenance and fuel storage costs.

All combustion turbines and combined cycles, including black start units, are required to make changes to their accounting of maintenance expenses, said Thomas Hauske, senior lead engineer.

Unit owners and the Independent Market Monitor have until Thursday to agree on changes. PJM must accept or reject submitted values by May 27. The new rates take effect in June.

Load Management for 2015/2016 Presented

PJM expects about 8,250 MW of demand response for the 2015/16 delivery year.

Curtailment service providers registered 6,700 MW of pre-emergency DR and 1,550 MW of emergency DR as of April 30. Lead times break down as follows: Quick (30 minutes), 5,600 MW; Short (60 minutes), 350 MW; and Long (120 minutes), 2,300 MW. There are 6,000 MW of Limited DR (June- September); 2,100 MW of Extended Summer (May- October); and 150 MW of Annual DR. The figures will not be finalized until May 31.

The products are always called as a group unless they are out of season or they have been called too many times and PJM wants to save some Limited DR calls for later in the summer.

PJM has automated its dispatch of DR through its emergency procedure postings.

— Suzanne Herel