The Western Electricity Coordinating Council last week kicked off a resource adequacy initiative that revealed as much about how the organization hopes to position itself for the future as it does about its efforts to address a looming RA shortage.

WECC’s new Resource Adequacy Forum is the product of a half-day reliability workshop held in Seattle in February, where industry stakeholders from across the West engaged in a series of group exercises to help the NERC regional entity identify its near-term priorities.

During a “walk-around” exercise at the workshop, participants were encouraged to circulate throughout a conference room decorated with posters showing descriptions of NERC-identified risks. The largest contingent clustered around the “Resource Adequacy and Performance” poster when it came time to vote on what risks WECC should prioritize. (See WECC Should Keep it Regional, Stakeholders Say.)

During a kick-off webinar that attracted nearly 170 participants Thursday, WECC staff emphasized the loose structure of the RA forum, saying it won’t report to any committee, establish a charter, keep meeting minutes or produce binding rules. WECC hopes to convene the forum in person twice a year, including this fall.

So why is WECC advancing the effort?

“The first ‘why’ really has to do with WECC’s identity as an organization,” said Vic Howell, the RE’s director of reliability risk management.

“WECC has been undergoing a very purposeful and deliberate transformation initiative that began a few years ago, where we’ve begun to ask ourselves some hard questions about our identity as a company,” Howell said.

After examining its “default future,” he said, WECC sought a different, “invented” future “characterized by a partnership where we put a strong focus on collaborating with stakeholders to strive for what we consider to be our common goal of having a reliable and secure interconnection.”

(In an email to ERO Insider, WECC Manager of Communications and Outreach Julie Booth defined the default future as “our future with no intervention or attempt to change the course of that future. WECC acknowledges that our future will happen, but we choose to shape what that future looks like.”)

“We really see this forum as a manifestation of that invented future, because we’re partnering with you folks to collaboratively address the reliability topic of resource adequacy,” Howell said. “That’s really the foundational reason why we’re creating this forum. Also, many of you know that recent studies have shown that resource adequacy is an emerging reliability risk in the interconnection.”

Turning to more concrete goals, Howell said WECC intends to “supplement” NERC’s annual Long-Term Reliability Assessment (LTRA) with its own RA assessment.

“We learned that there are several aspects of the NERC LTRA that really could use some improvement to better meet the needs of policymakers in the West,” Howell said. Rather than changing the NERC process, WECC would perform a separate RA study or set of studies that allow for more flexibility in assumptions and reporting assessment techniques, as well as inclusion of a wider range of scenarios, he said.

“This way we’re able to meet our obligations to NERC and adhere to their rules while at the same time producing a separate work product that’s more tailor-made for the West.”

Howell said WECC also aims to “partner” with its entities to support their RA work, which could include:

• reviewing and comparing study assumptions;
• assisting entities with their assumptions on their seams;
• providing insight and education as entities develop RA programs; and
• helping with model-building and interpretation of results.

WECC also hopes its forum will become a “hub” for RA discussions.

“When it comes to resource adequacy assessments, we have a good wide-area view,” Howell said. “In our reliability-focused studies, we’re looking at the entirety of the Western Interconnection, while others are looking at their specific areas. We believe that this broader view can supplement — not replace — the resource adequacy studies that are currently being done at the entity level.”

Howell touted WECC’s position of policy neutrality as being a “big deal.”

“We believe that positions us well for serving as a hub for adequacy discussions — that independence aspect of WECC that we bring,” he said.

‘Honest Broker’

WECC’s new vice president of strategic engagement and general counsel, Jordan White, picked up on the theme of the RE being an “honest broker” of information.

“As a regulator who was formerly charged with making resource planning decisions, I know that unbiased and transparent information and analysis are really key and essential in making sound decisions that impact long-term resource adequacy in the region,” said White, who joined WECC in May after serving on Utah’s Public Service Commission since 2015. “I know the same is true for policymakers, resource planners and utility executives who all rely on sound information to inform their respective resource adequacy roles.”

White said WECC wants to better understand the “world” of its stakeholders.

“What are the drivers and levers of your planning and decision-making? What are your modeling tools, planning cycles, data sources and assumptions? We want to know what keeps you up at night and how we can help. In turn, we hope you gain a better understanding of WECC’s methodologies, data sources and tools, and where there might be potential collaboration opportunities,” White said.

He also urged regional stakeholders “to break down unproductive information silos and to allow facts and analysis to drive sound decisions that promote reliability for the entire Western Interconnection.”

Looking ahead to brighter days post-pandemic, WECC Manager of Performance Analysis and Resource Adequacy Matt Elkins said, “What we want is a forum where we can all get together and discuss, for multiple days, and have different topics of discussion.

“We want this to be a place where people can come and present their processes. They can come and present the projects they’re working on … the results they’re finding. It’s just a place where subject matter experts can get together,” he said.

In response to a participant’s question, Elkins clarified that the forum is not intended to replace or duplicate the Northwest Power Pool’s nascent RA efforts to ensure sufficient capacity in eight Western U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. While WECC would welcome NWPP’s contributions to the forum, WECC’s RA models will remain at a “very high level,” focusing on balancing areas, he said. (NWPP’s effort will drill further down to the needs of the 18 entities currently funding the program.) (See Western Resource Adequacy Program in the Works.)

“It’s just for us to kind of pinpoint where risk is in the system,” Elkins said of WECC’s approach.

Another participant asked whether WECC has a desire to set a minimum reserve standard to ensure that no utilities are “leaning” on the capacity of others.

Elkins acknowledged stakeholder concerns that the region is “double-counting” its capabilities in some areas, with some market participants unknowingly relying on the same capacity.

But he said, “I don’t know that we need to have a standard.

“I think everyone’s doing a great job. I think we need to communicate more on what our model assumptions are and those kinds of things, and that’s really the point of this resource adequacy forum.”

Survey Says …

WECC wrapped up the webinar with an anonymous survey that elicited real-time participant responses to a handful of questions about the RA effort. The comments provided a flavor of stakeholder concerns — and wishes — regarding RA in the Western Interconnection.

One said WECC should set minimum RA standards for utilities in the region. Another called for the “need to connect the dots between policymaking and its effect on resource adequacy.” A third said regional coordination should “include different pathways to move to a Western RTO.”

One participant asked that WECC provide both in-person and virtual options for participants from companies that will not soon allow staff to travel because of COVID-19 concerns.

Another hinted at the paradox in WECC’s desire to help “invent” a future while maintaining its position of neutrality on the RA issue. “While the forum doesn’t have any defined ‘outputs,’ does WECC have the intention of anything more than information exchange? I think WECC might want to consider a related effort to host a technical RA inter-model comparison effort to understand different approaches to RA assessment and perhaps move toward a regional consensus.”