VALLEY FORGE, Pa. — General assumptions regarding winter operations will need to be replaced with actual data to improve PJM’s winter resource adequacy analysis, staff told the Planning Committee last week.
“There’s a propensity for our load model to under-forecast the winter load,” PJM’s Tom Falin said. “This is of concern to us.”
The analysis also found that while the generation forced outage rate for winter rose just 1% from 2007 to 2015, winter’s standard deviation is 4%, more than double the 1.7% for summer. Falin presented a graph that highlighted the increased uncertainty, showing that in one winter week, the forced outage rate could be anywhere from 4 to 12%. Noting that as many as 181 transmission elements, including lines and transformers, were on planned maintenance at some point during January, he questioned whether they could result in deliverability problems.
“To get a handle on that will be a challenge for us,” he said, adding that it’s another area that’s not being fully captured in PJM’s loss-of-load expectation (LOLE) studies.
One area to look at might be equivalent forced outage rates – demand (EFORd), which measures the probability that a unit will fail when needed. PJM’s current EFORd calculation is an annual measurement that is independent of other EFORds, weather and other variables.
Falin questioned whether it made sense to develop EFORds that consider seasonal variables. Additionally, the class averages for wind and solar are based on summer measurements, which underestimates wind’s winter availability while overestimating that for solar.
Another issue is modeling. PJM’s modeling tool, PRISM, “is going to say there’s virtually a 0% chance of a 13% outage rate,” Falin said. “The problem is we’ve seen it.”
“We may be getting to a point where wind [generation] captures a big-enough share where we should start capturing turbine’s actual performance and not just assume it’s 13%,” he said.
In November, stakeholders approved a problem statement and issue charge to review PJM’s load forecasting and planning models and methodologies to determine whether the RTO is properly calculating the amount of capacity needed in winter to meet its LOLE targets. The initiative was proposed by economist James Wilson on behalf of consumer advocates for Maryland, New Jersey and Delaware. Wilson and others have questioned why the summer-peaking RTO requires identical amounts of capacity in summer and winter. (See PJM Stakeholders Reject CP Rule Changes, OK Additional Study.)
Staff Moving Forward on Memorializing Competitive Planning Process
PJM staff presented the PC with the first product of their meetings on redesigning the Transmission Expansion Advisory Committee, a new Manual 14F: Competitive Planning Process. The manual mostly codifies processes that previously had been done informally. (See PJM Making Cost Consciousness a Focus for RTEP Redesign.)
PJM’s Mike Herman, who is overseeing the project, said he had been told by Dave Anders, the keeper of all institutional knowledge regarding the RTO’s stakeholder process, that he can’t remember the last time it created a new manual. “So we in planning must be doing something right,” Herman joked.
While PJM acknowledged it’s already received substantial feedback about the manual, staff urged stakeholders to provide all comments for next month’s meeting.
“We would like to move this along next time,” Vice President of Planning Steve Herling said. “We would really appreciate people going through it [and bringing any issues to the April meeting]. The only way we’re going to find out if this works really well if you all test it out and tell us what you like.”
Public Service Electric and Gas’ Alex Stern foresaw an enforceability issue. “Although it is true that PJM hasn’t policed incumbent transmission owners to ensure they are building to minimum design standards, they’ve never had to because state officials more than do that job,” he said. When there’s a problem, customers often call state officials, who call the local utility.
“What happens next is typically things get fixed so that calls … don’t happen further and customer service is at an appropriate level,” Stern said. “State officials aren’t going to know [whom to contact at non-incumbent transmission developers]. When something’s not working, they’re likely going to call their local utilities and PJM’s government relations people.”
Herman also presented proposed administrative updates to Manual 14B to change all occurrences of “special protection system” to “remedial action scheme” per a change to the NERC glossary of terms.
New Design Requirements and Procedure Developments Presented
The Designated Entity Design Standards Task Force introduced its first product at the PC meeting: a document setting standards for overhead transmission. The task force will also be developing standards for substations, system protection, control design and coordination, staff said.
PJM also presented its planned structure for complying with standards released last fall by NERC on geomagnetic disturbance events. The structure includes a five-year implementation schedule that won’t produce assessment results until 2021. Full GMD vulnerability results won’t be available until 2022, when PJM plans to begin developing any necessary corrective plans.
PJM Offers Four RMR Contracts
PJM told the TEAC it has offered generation owners in New Jersey and Virginia reliability-must-run contracts for four units, all of which have received FERC approval.
The New Jersey units — Rockland Capital’s coal-fired B.L. England Units 2 and 3 in the Atlantic City Electric transmission zone — were asked to run until previously approved baseline transmission upgrades are completed. The upgrades were expected to be completed within the next two years, but delays to related projects have made the timeline indeterminate.
PJM also is asking Dominion Energy to keep operating its Yorktown coal-fired Units 1 and 2 until a transmission solution is approved. The plants, on Virginia’s middle peninsula, have been the focus of years of controversy. Their license was extended to April, but environmental groups have been pushing for their closure. Dominion has sought support for installing a 500-kV line from the mainland to the south, but environmentalists have fought that as well. Without approval of the transmission line, PJM has identified reliability issues that would arise if the Yorktown units close. (See Dominion Says Blackouts the Only Solution for Va. Peninsula.)
— Rory D. Sweeney