Members Approve IRPS SARs

At its final meeting of 2022, NERC’s Reliability and Security Technical Committee (RSTC) voted to endorse two standard authorization requests (SAR) focused on inverter-based resources (IBR), while calling for comments on two more SARs focused on distributed energy resources (DER).

The first two SARs originated in NERC’s Inverter-based Resources Performance Subcommittee (IRPS), which submitted them for comment at the RSTC’s last meeting in September. With the full committee’s endorsement, the SARs — modified in response to members’ feedback — will be sent to NERC’s Standards Committee for approval so that work can begin on the standards.

One SAR would update reliability standard EOP-004-4 (Event Reporting), which identifies the events that utilities must report to regional entities or other responsible authorities. The IRPS identified the standard as having “relatively large generator loss size thresholds” that could leave IBR-related events unreported, as well as “language more suitable for synchronous generation.” The new SAR proposes to lower the generator loss threshold and clarify the language to include IBRs as well.

For the other SAR, IRPS proposed to create a new standard that would require generator owners (GO) to “identify, analyze, and develop mitigations for any abnormal performance issues identified,” while creating requirements for GOs’ mitigation plans to meet. The new standard would also give balancing authorities and reliability coordinators the ability to identify potential issues using their own monitoring capabilities.

The SPIDERWG’s SARs are at an earlier stage of development and not ready for submission to the Standards Committee, the working group’s chair Shayan Rizvi told the RSTC. They would modify FAC-001-4 (Facility Interconnection Requirements) and FAC-002-4 (Facility Interconnection Studies) to require more consideration of potential reliability impacts from DERs before they are integrated to the bulk power system. The SARs will be open for comment by RSTC members through Jan. 13, 2023.

SPIDERWG also brought a reliability guideline for developing parameters for NERC’s DER_A model, as well as a white paper on battery energy storage systems and how they can be incorporated into DER models. The RSTC approved both measures.

White Paper Sparks Debate

Another white paper — this one related to cybersecurity for DERs — led to a lengthy debate as members suggested one of its recommendations was not appropriate for the setting.

The white paper aimed to provide guidance to industry on cybersecurity for DERs and DER aggregators, including suggestions for “certification and standards support” by industry. But several attendees pushed back against a recommendation that the RSTC and its stakeholder groups “identify possible reliability and security risks these entities could pose if compromised.”

Kayla Messamore of Evergy pointed out that “there’s a lot of activity ongoing in that space already,” and questioned whether the recommendation would lead to confusion among industry stakeholders trying to navigate a complex topic. Dominion Energy’s Sean Bodkin added that while there was merit to the recommendation, it should be made in another venue.

“I think … we need to get out in front of [this], but I also have to agree with what Kayla said, that this is not the appropriate place to do it,” Bodkin said. “This is a technical document, not a document about registration or about getting out in front of what would be a NERC initiative to change the registration criteria.”

However, an amendment to strip the controversial language from the white paper failed, and the document received the RSTC’s approval as originally written.

Future Meetings

Despite the committee’s recent return to in-person meetings — the September event was held at the Midwest Reliability Organization’s offices in Minnesota — RSTC leadership announced that most of next year’s meetings will be virtual in some form. (See NERC RSTC Briefs: Sept. 13-14, 2022.)

At a recent meeting of the RSTC executive committee, leaders decided that only the first meeting of 2023 will be fully in-person, Secretary Stephen Crutchfield told participants. That gathering will occur March 21-23. The location is yet to be finalized, but Crutchfield said management aims to hold it in Tampa, Florida. NERC’s headquarters in Atlanta will serve as a backup.

For the June 20-22 meeting, the RSTC will gather at the MRO offices again for a hybrid session in which only members will meet in person, with other observers attending virtually. The committee’s Sept. 19-21 meeting will follow the same format, while the final meeting of the year Dec. 6-7 will be entirely virtual. The March, June and September sessions will be three days long because of the inclusion of an informational session on the first day.

The RSTC’s meeting plan for next year is similar to that of NERC’s Board of Trustees, which announced at its most recent meeting in November that it would hold only two in-person meetings next year, with the others to be either hybrid or fully virtual. (See “Board Makes Meeting Changes Official,” NERC Board of Trustees/MRC Briefs: Nov. 15-16, 2022.) NERC management said the schedule is intended to reduce the cost of attending meetings for stakeholders.