Cybersecurity and “extreme natural events” top the list of grid issues WECC plans to focus on over the next two years, along with resource adequacy and the impact of “emerging technologies” on the Western Interconnection.  

WECC’s Board of Directors on Wednesday voted unanimously to approve staff recommendations for the organization’s four near-term “reliability risk priorities” (RRPs), issues of special concern that warrant focused research and stakeholder efforts. 

“The identification of RRPs does not preclude work on other risks,” WECC wrote in a brief submitted to the board ahead of the vote. “The prioritization process is meant to aid WECC staff and technical committees in focusing their work.”

The priorities identified for 2022-23 come after an intensive stakeholder process that began in February when WECC convened a workshop to begin narrowing the potential list of risks. (See WECC Workshop Assesses Western Risks.) 

That proved to be a daunting task for a geographically diverse region confronting multiple threats: growing wildfire danger; deepening drought; and an accelerating reliance on variable renewable resources coupled with the large-scale retirement of conventional generators.

Addressing the board at its virtual quarterly meeting Wednesday, Maury Galbraith, executive director of the Western Interstate Energy Board (WIEB), said WIEB’s Western Interconnection Regional Advisory Body (WIRAB) of state energy officials was “very happy” with the “strategic focus” of the reliability risk priorities and the process used to select them. His one complaint, though, was that the list of potential priorities kept changing over the course of the process, making it difficult for WIRAB and other parties to focus on and “talk consistently” about some of the risks. 

“I think that the constant changing of the risk priorities is probably a function of the WECC staff trying to anticipate where the board wants to be on these priorities,” Galbraith said. “And what I would say is, I think it’s OK to have daylight between the WECC staff and the WECC board on these issues. I think it supports the independence of both of those entities.”

Board member Gary Leidich differed with Galbraith’s take.

“I think what happened here was the sausage making, if you want to call it that, was done very publicly. And so I think we all started with, ‘What do we really want?’ And we wound up, I think, with a great set of reliability risk priorities,” Leidich said. 

“I accept Maury’s critique of how this changed over the timeframe since February,” Kris Raper, WECC vice president of external affairs, said. “I would say that part of the reason that it changed was not just anticipating where the board wanted to go with this list, but also where the stakeholders were going with this list. And so each time we provided an opportunity for stakeholder involvement, that list modified and evolved as the process went forward.”

Speaking Wednesday at a virtual meeting of WECC’s Member Advisory Committee (MAC), Fred Heutte, senior policy associate with the Northwest Energy Coalition, said that while WECC could have accelerated the prioritization process with a “simple rank-choice exercise,” he found value in stakeholders having sufficient time to produce “a result we can all stand with.” 

“And that time is well worth taking, because it helps us get out of our specific areas of concern in a given moment and think about the bigger picture in a pretty structured way, not just a blue-sky way,” Heutte said.

‘Uniqueness’

While the MAC on Tuesday endorsed the four priorities without dissent, longtime committee member Duncan Brown expressed surprise that cybersecurity made it to the final list.

“But then again, we’re not party to a lot of the information that’s flowing around at a board level and within the organization about cyber-attacks and things going on because of the sensitive nature,” Brown said. “I’m not saying we should be, I’m just saying we’re not, so it will be interesting to hear from the board at some stage as to, in generic terms, what we’re seeing in the way of cyber activity against the grid right now and how important that makes this as being one of the topics.”

When WECC kicked off the process in February, cybersecurity would have seemed unlikely to earn the top spot, given the stated preference for prioritizing risks unique to the West and NERC’s existing focus on cyber risks across the ERO.

“I don’t think ‘uniqueness’ to the West is the right word; maybe something relevant to the West, where it’s an issue for the West,” board member Ric Campbell said, noting that other regions of the U.S. are also dealing with RA and emerging technologies.

“I think about what can take the system down, and cybersecurity to me is at the top of the list,” Dick Ferreira, principal at ZGlobal, said during the MAC meeting.

WECC is hoping its cybersecurity work will support the “continent-wide” efforts of NERC and the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC) while also addressing issues specific to the West.  

Delivering a quarterly update to the WECC board Wednesday, NERC CEO Jim Robb pointed to “a couple of events” in the past year in which one of the ERO’s regional entities picked up on a cyber threat that NERC itself had not identified, including a vulnerability in commonly used modeling software.

As it works to “recraft” its strategic plan this year, NERC “is going to be trying to be much more thoughtful about what is the model around cyber, outside of the compliance and monitoring and enforcement of the standards, where the regions can really help us advance the ball,” Robb said.

Playing Together

WECC’s second priority, extreme natural events, was a more obvious choice as the region persistently faces record-breaking temperatures, prolonged cold snaps, deepening drought and intensifying wildfires, in addition to the risk of earthquakes along the West Coast. In its brief to the board, WECC said it expects to examine the impacts of such events on system operations, including load impacts that can be integrated into future reliability assessments. 

WECC said it could also investigate how resilient the Western Interconnection is in the face of extreme events, “elevate the dialogue” related to aging infrastructure in high-risk areas and “open dialogue” about adopting a wildfire mitigation data system.

On Thursday, FERC issued a proposed rulemaking requiring transmission providers to detail their plans for assessing their vulnerability to extreme weather and mitigating the risks. (See FERC Approves Extreme Weather Assessment NOPRs.)   

Resource adequacy, which WECC deemed its top priority two years ago, was relegated to the third spot on the new list of priorities. The organization has since begun issuing annual assessments to help stakeholders understand the potential impact of declining resource capacity on the system. (See West Cannot Rely on Imports, WECC Says.)

“WECC will continue to improve its stakeholder engagement to gather input, shape analytical work, and share useful and timely information, particularly with its regulatory and policy partners,” WECC said in its brief.

“WECC’s resource adequacy work focuses largely on resource plans, but there is a noticeable absence of information on how or whether integrated resource plans are carried out. To complement its current studies, WECC will evaluate how past resource plans have been implemented and the potential implications to resource adequacy and reliability,” it said.

The fourth priority, examining the impact of changing resources and customer loads on the grid, will likely initially focus on the impact of inverter-based resources (IBRs) on system performance.

“In some cases, the West simply does not have adequate models and data to evaluate the impacts associated with the changing technology (e.g., models for IBRs need to be improved throughout the Western Interconnection). Accurate models and data need to keep pace with the changing resource mix and loads to ensure reliability,” WECC said.

“As we transition to 100% green resources, [there’s] a lot of discussion about challenges in integrating inverter-based resources,” Steve Ashbaker, WECC reliability initiatives director, told the MAC on Tuesday.

Ashbaker explained that most IBRs are “grid-following” resources, meaning they can only inject power into the grid when there is a system frequency and voltage, whereas “grid-forming” resources can create their own frequency and voltage.

“The other thing we need to look at is grid-following plus grid-forming inverters in parallel with traditional rotating inertia — how do they all play together?” he said. “We look at areas of system strength, voltage regulation, frequency regulation, fault current oscillation dampening as just being some of the challenges that we need to consider.”