WILMINGTON, Del. — PJM expects to spend $280 million in 2016, a $3 million increase over 2015, including $36 million on capital projects, according to a preliminary budget presented last week.
The spending plan will result in a composite expense charge of 32.9 cents/MWh, a rate that has remained consistent for the past five years.
About $28 million of the capital projects budget is dedicated to upkeep and enhancement of current applications, systems and infrastructure.
Another $5 million will be spent on new products and services, including the technology to support intraday bidding. The remaining $3 million will go toward interregional coordination, such as coordinated transaction scheduling with MISO.
The Finance Committee is set to consider the budget on Oct. 1 before it goes before the Board of Managers on Oct. 15.
Revisions Will Reveal Closed-Loop Interfaces Earlier
The committee endorsed manual revisions requiring PJM to announce the creation of closed-loop pricing interfaces five days before the close of the next financial transmission rights auction. The rules make an exception for outages of less than 10 days and those setting prices for demand response under current manual and Tariff rules.
PJM uses such interfaces to capture operator actions in LMPs rather than in uplift because its modeling software is unable to set prices for voltage problems. (See “Package Calls for Notice on Pricing Interfaces” in PJM MIC Briefs.)
Changes Pave Way for Transition to Markets Gateway
Members endorsed revisions to the Operating Agreement and Tariff reflecting the transition from the eMarket tool to Markets Gateway. Training on the new tool is expected to be held in the second half of this year.
Change to Manual 37 OK’d
The MRC endorsed changes to Manual 37: Reliability Coordination that modify section 2.4.2 (Change management process), replacing references to the Change Control Review Board with the Enterprise Change Management Standard. The standard ensures that changes to PJM business application systems, programs, data, systems software and hardware are authorized and applied so as not to compromise the stability and security of any information technology component.
They also update the definition of system operating limits (SOL) to make clear that PJM controls to the most conservative limits and that interconnection reliability operating limits (IROL) are an elevated level of SOL, not distinct from them. The changes also clarify what SOLs and IROLs are monitored by the RTO, as well as SOL violations reporting.
— Suzanne Herel