Balancing Operations Manual Changes Endorsed

PJM stakeholders at last week’s Operating Committee meeting endorsed manual changes related to the stability limits and intelligent reserve deployment in markets and an operation issue charge developed in the Market Implementation Committee.

The manual changes were endorsed in a rare acclamation vote that included eight objections and 11 abstentions.

Donnie Bielak, manager of reliability engineering for PJM, reviewed the conforming changes to Manual 12: Balancing Operations, highlighting the changes in two different sections of the manual.

In section 4.1.2: Loading Reserves, language was added stating that PJM dispatch will use intelligent reserve deployment (IRD) in security constrained economic dispatch (SCED) to initiate a synchronized reserve event by approving the latest solved IRD case if there’s insufficient regulation and economic generation to recover area control error (ACE).

Bielak said the change highlighted automated and manual methods for implementing contingency reserves.

“Under normal operating conditions, we would use the automatic method and go out with an IRD case,” Bielak said. “However, we did put provisions in there for PJM actions regarding if the IRD case was invalid and how we would deploy those reserves under that scenario.”

Section 5.5: Generator Stability Limitations is a new section highlighting stability-limited generation and clarifying PJM and member actions, Bielak said.

The PJM actions in the section state, “When stability issues are identified, PJM will confirm/calculate the stability limitation and communicate the limit value(s) as a stability limit, including the effective timeframe for same, to the impacted PJM generation owner(s). This includes any changes, including cancellation, around a given stability limit. For real power (megawatt) stability limits, limits will be translated into a corresponding generator output constraint (in megawatts) for a generator whereby the generator output constraints shall be respected.”

The section says generation owners should “respond promptly to specific requests and directions” of PJM dispatchers, and generators should honor dispatch basepoints based on stability limitations by following PJM dispatch.

Paul Sotkiewicz of E-Cubed Policy Associates said he wanted to make sure PJM dispatchers will consider switching options before the generator output construct is used and make it “very clear” in the manual so “there’s nothing left to the imagination” for dispatchers to interpret.

Bielak said PJM dispatchers will evaluate any other available types of switching solutions and make sure they don’t cause “adverse implications” to other generators or overloads on the system. He said there are “a lot of different factors” that must be evaluated to go ahead with a switching solution.

“We did a full review here of all the operations manuals, and we definitely believe that the existing language or the new language that we’re proposing here in Manual 12 is the best course of action moving forward,” Bielak said.

The manual language goes to the May 25 Markets and Reliability Committee for endorsement. PJM is looking for an effective date of June 1.

Outage Coordination Issue Charge Endorsed

Stakeholders will begin examining outage coordination processes and procedures after unanimously endorsing an issue charge.

Paul McGlynn of PJM’s system operations group reviewed the proposed issue charge and problem statement intended to address the RTO’s transmission and generation outage coordination.

The key work activities and scope of the issue charge include education and review of current procedures for submitting, classifying, evaluating, approving and scheduling transmission and generation outage requests. The review will look at current study timelines, analytical activities such as reliability and expected congestion studies and any adjustments to submitted outages based on PJM’s review.

McGlynn said PJM will review outage planning and coordination processes required for regional transmission expansion plan project implementation by focusing on projects that could require extended outages of existing facilities such as transmission line rebuild projects.

Work also includes “proposed modification and improvements to transmission and generation outage assessments, transparency and available tools.” McGlynn said discussion of outage assessments will include reliability and congestion assessments for the PJM system and a review of the impacts on the PJM system of neighboring region outages.

Out-of-scope items in the issue charge include modifying the transmission owners’ ability to “take necessary outages on their facilities” and any proposal that conflicts with the Consolidated Transmission Owners Agreement.

Work on the issues will be completed at the OC and is expected to take up to a year to complete.

Sotkiewicz asked for a possible friendly amendment to the issue charge calling for an education portion on how the issues being discussed will be brought to other committees, including the Planning Committee and the MIC, so that the communication portion “doesn’t get overlooked in the process.”

“These outages can affect everything from credit to market operations and everything else,” Sotkiewicz said.

McGlynn said PJM can touch on dissemination of information while going through the education process, but he said processes already exist in the manual to ensure information is passed along to other committees in the stakeholder process.

“I don’t know that it’s something necessarily that we need a lot of stakeholder input on,” McGlynn said.

Manual Endorsements

Stakeholders unanimously endorsed two different manuals as part of the periodic review. They included:

• • • Manual 36: System Restoration, with minor changes such as replacing System Restoration Coordinators Subcommittee (SRCS) with System Operations Subcommittee (SOS) and updating the under-frequency load shed table with new data.
    • Manual 3: Transmission Operations, with updating stability limitation process language in accordance with FERC docket ER21-1802 and aligning language with the current TO/TOP matrix language.