By Rich Heidorn Jr.
FERC last week approved ISO-NE rule changes requiring almost 1,100 MW of non-dispatchable generation to purchase equipment allowing them to receive electronic dispatch instructions from the RTO (ER17-68).
The new rules, proposed by ISO-NE and the New England Power Pool in October, apply the dispatchability requirements mostly to municipal solid waste (406 MW) and biomass (263 MW) facilities. Also included are 175 MW of non-intermittent hydro generation and 157 MW of resources that exceed the below-5-MW limitation for settlement-only resources.
They will be required to order remote terminal units — and communication circuits to connect them to the ISO-NE network — by Jan. 15, and to become dispatchable within 12 months afterward. The rules, which will be phased in through June 2020, also require intermittent resources participating in the Forward Capacity Market to offer into the day-ahead energy market.
ISO-NE said the changes will improve reliability by eliminating time-consuming manual dispatch and aid price formation by incorporating additional resources into LMPs. Non-dispatchable generators enter the market as price takers and cannot be marginal.
The RTO said the rules also will aid the participation of storage resources, which both consume and inject energy, in the energy market.
The rules are similar to the “Do Not Exceed” dispatch rules FERC accepted in 2015 for wind and most hydro resources (ER15-1509).
Going forward, only solar, nuclear, settlement-only and most external resources will remain non-dispatchable. Demand response resources will remain non-dispatchable until they are fully integrated into the energy market in 2018, according to ISO-NE.
The RTO says it will propose changes to make larger solar resources dispatchable once it has developed a way to accurately forecast their output, similar to its short-term wind forecast system.
In approving the rule changes, the commission rejected contentions from Eversource Energy that the changes violated the rights of qualifying facilities under the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act.
“A QF is not obligated to participate in the ISO-NE administered energy markets and can instead choose to operate exclusively as a behind-the-meter resource on its host utility’s system and not be under ISO-NE’s direct operational control and not be subject to the proposed revisions,” the commission said.
