By Tom Kleckner

SPP is confident of its preparation for winter, although it will be adding the winter-peaking Integrated System to its footprint in October, Bruce Rew, SPP’s vice president of operations, told FERC.

The IS, which covers much of the Dakotas, will increase SPP’s load by about 15% and provide a contrast to the RTO, which is predominantly summer-peaking. “We don’t foresee any major … concerns for the winter,” Rew said, citing a 60% reserve margin.

SPP has included the IS in its annual winter assessment. It will hold a winter-preparedness workshop on Dec. 10 to cover emergency procedures and industry-wide lessons learned. Rew said gas pipeline representatives have been encouraged to attend, as they have in the past.

Rew said SPP has performed an analysis of this winter’s anticipated conditions and has determined additional actions are not needed. However, should extreme weather cause generation outages, the RTO would move to a “conservative operation alert.” These actions are discussed throughout the year in workshops and with stakeholders. Generally, SPP considers early committal of resources and delaying or postponing generation outages to ensure reliability.

The RTO has updated its regional weather-alert procedures, strengthening communication with gas pipelines, based on the footprint’s weather evaluations. An action plan has been developed and distributed to affected parties, Rew said.

SPP’s emergency operating plan includes criteria that require market participants to notify the SPP balancing authority when they anticipate fuel restrictions below certain thresholds. These notifications are intended to help prepare SPP before any larger fuel issues arise.

Rew said that SPP performs fuel-related assessments throughout the winter, depending on forecasted system conditions. Coordinated load-shed testing between SPP and transmission owners will begin this fall, and there will be weekly communication tests between SPP and participants.

The SPP gas-electric coordination task force has submitted a proposal in response to FERC Order 809 to better align the Integrated Marketplace’s timeline with gas nominations. Earlier posting of day-ahead market results leads to earlier posting of day-ahead reliability unit commitment results in time for the evening gas nomination. (See SPP Moving to 9:30 Day-Ahead Close.)