By Peter Key and Rory D. Sweeney

VALLEY FORGE, Pa. — PJM and NYISO held a joint meeting on Monday to get stakeholder feedback on their effort to replace a decades-old power-flow protocol.

The RTOs must have a new protocol in place next May when Consolidated Edison terminates a “wheel” arrangement that allows it to move 1,000 MW from generators in upstate New York through Public Service Electric and Gas facilities in northern New Jersey to serve its load in New York City.

The main question is how to handle eight phase angle regulators (PARs) that currently govern the direction of flows on lines connecting the PJM and NYISO grids. There are one each on the A, B and C lines that flow the 1,000 MW from PSE&G into New York; three south of Waldwick on the J and K lines that flow the energy into PSE&G from upstate New York; and two on the Branchburg-Ramapo 5018 line.

At PJM, the situation is being overseen through the Planning, Market Implementation and Operating committees. During last week’s Planning Committee meeting, PJM’s Mark Sims explained that the PARs have more physical limitations than HVDC ties, which can be more specific in regulating flow. The PARs can be set to certain “tap positions” to “bias” the flow, but each of them has a limit of 20 adjustments per day and 400 per month.

At Monday’s meeting, PJM and NYISO staffers gave presentations on the operational aspects and market impacts of the wheel replacement.

Phil D’Antonio, PJM’s manager for reliability engineering, said the new protocol must protect reliability, manage congestion, preserve competitive market behavior and minimize the impacts to PJM and NYISO loads. It also must be able to be facilitated with the existing PAR technology and implemented in both grid operators’ market models.

On the markets side, PJM and NYISO are proposing adding the J, K, A, B and C lines into the single PJM-NY AC Interface and implementing market-to-market coordination using the PARs on the lines’ interfaces. The RTOs said the proposal uses existing market constructs in both their markets, increasing the likelihood it can be implemented by next May.

The review of the new protocol will include an N-1-1 analysis.

PJM and NYISO have agreed not to change their treatment of Rockland Electric Co.’s load, 80% of which is supplied by the 5018 line, with the remainder flowing over several western ties across the New York-Pennsylvania border.

One of the proposals being evaluated — the “natural flow” — would send about 500 MW from NYISO into PJM via the J and K lines and then into New York City via the A, B and C lines, Sims said. Stakeholders have questioned allowing this because it appears to provide similar service to the “wheel” without the same transmission payments. Completely curtailing that natural flow, or modeling 0 MW, threatens to “max out” the PARs’ thermal and voltage limits, Sims said.

Among the “high-level” considerations that the grid operators are discussing are biasing the flows applied to the J, K, A, B and C lines by accounting for the natural flow, and then applying agreed-upon interchange percentages to each interface (5018 and ABC) to reduce congestion.

NYISO published a white paper on the process and will partner with PJM to publish another one that includes PJM’s perspective, which will be released in conjunction with a meeting of NYISO stakeholders.

Stakeholders have asked PJM to create a contingency plan for extended outages of the PARs.