VALLEY FORGE, Pa. — PJM’s plan to add several gas pipeline emergency procedures to its manuals was derailed by stakeholders at last week’s Operating Committee meeting.

Staff had included the pipeline contingency plans in revisions to Manuals 3: Transmission Operations Updates and 13: Emergency Operations, two of five manual revisions set for endorsement votes at the meeting. All five were endorsed by acclamation, but not before the pipeline contingencies were stripped out.

The revisions would have added procedures for assessing the impacts of gas contingencies on the grid, including system conditions triggering the assessment; determining applicable gas infrastructure contingencies; and coordination with generation owners and gas pipelines.

PJM is attempting to get rules for a responding to emergencies on the pipeline system documented before the winter season, but stakeholders fear a repeat of the polar vortex conditions in 2014, when gas prices soared past offer caps and generators were left with no mechanism to recoup costs in the aftermath.

Gas generator representatives convened before and during the meeting to orchestrate moving an informational item on system resilience — scheduled for the tail end of the meeting — to the top of the agenda ahead of the votes. During that discussion, Panda Power Funds’ Bob O’Connell proposed adding a waiver to the manuals that would allow gas generators to recoup all expenses incurred if PJM directed them to operate outside of their dispatch schedule during an emergency.

PJM balked at the proposal. Chris O’Hara, PJM’s deputy general counsel, questioned whether stakeholders could vote to require the RTO to include in its Tariff a waiver of its own rules. O’Hara’s input made other stakeholders, including Dave Mabry of the PJM Industrial Customers Coalition and Exelon’s Sharon Midgley, hesitant to support the waiver until they could vet the motion with their organizations. Both expressed willingness to discuss the matter further at the Markets and Reliability Committee.

The meeting took a short break to discuss the situation. When it reconvened, O’Connell withdrew his waiver proposal and instead moved to vote on the manual revisions without the pipeline-contingency sections. The votes passed, and PJM’s Ken Seiler, who chairs the committee, said that a solution would be developed to present to the Dec. 21 MRC meeting.

Owner Transfer Rules Revision

PJM is planning to revise its rules for alerting it to changes in generator owners. The revisions would require notification at least 60 days prior to the date requested for the generation transfer — time for the RTO to review the information and ensure that all required documentation is submitted.

The request would need to be accompanied by 22 pieces of information, including contact information, a fuel-cost policy for applicable units and reactive credits. The fuel-cost policy would need to be submitted within 45 days of the requested effective date. PJM plans to develop a user guide to provide step-by-step directions on how to fill out the necessary information.

— Rory D. Sweeney