VALLEY FORGE, Pa. — Stakeholders quickly approved administrative revisions to Manual 14B at last week’s Planning Committee meeting, but gaining endorsement for the newly developed Manual 14F is likely to be a more complex task.

The new manual will cover the competitive planning process. PJM, which has been updating the proposed language based on stakeholder feedback, asked members to submit any additional comments now so the manual will be up to date when it’s approved. The RTO called attention to its “decisional process diagram” (section 8, attachment 4). (See PJM Making Cost Consciousness a Focus for RTEP Redesign.)

“We really would like to get the comments now so we can integrate them,” said Steve Herling, vice president of planning.

Sharon Segner of LS Power questioned why provisions for cost containment aren’t thoroughly outlined and asked for a full vetting of the proposed text because there have been so many revisions.

PJM will bring the manual to the Markets and Reliability Committee on April 27 for a first read and hopes to receive endorsement in May.

Should I Stay or Should I Go? PJM Still Searching for Resolution to Interconnection Queue Issues

When PJM changed its interconnection queue processes several years ago, the purpose was to ensure everyone paid their fair share of infrastructure upgrades. Previously, whichever project triggered an upgrade would be on the hook for it, no matter how much it contributed to the problem. By having all projects wait in a six-month queue under the new rules, every request that contributed to an upgrade could contribute to paying for it.

“It seemed like a great idea that everybody would take a small piece of a $5 million impact,” said PJM’s Aaron Berner, who is leading the review of the interconnection process. “We haven’t come up with a way to fix it without switching back” to the earlier cost allocation process.

At issue is how to fairly allocate upgrade costs without unreasonably delaying project completions. Back when most projects were large-scale plants with long construction lead times, PJM instituted a rule that all projects would be held in a six-month queue to determine if any upgrades would be necessary for the requests in the queue. Upgrade costs that totaled less than $5 million were allocated to all projects upon the queue’s closure.

Because projects can be much smaller and completed much faster now, the six-month wait time can delay developers’ schedules. PJM is proposing a rule change that would allocate costs of upgrades to the first request that necessitates the spending. Any subsequent requests in the queue would contribute proportionally. (See PJM Considering Injection Rights for Demand Response.)

Returning to this “first to cause” strategy for upgrades less than $5 million has largely gone unchallenged by stakeholders in a series of discussions on the topic, which caused Carl Johnson, who represents the PJM Public Power Coalition, to question who among the stakeholders would be disadvantaged by the change back. He pointed out that there will be an unlucky project that receives the cost allocation.

“I’m curious how that will play out,” he said.

“That’s another incentive to coming in [to the request queue] early,” Berner said.

The Tariff and manual changes are on track to be implemented for the project queue that opens on Oct. 1, he said.

NYISO Changes Spur PJM Review of Emergency Import Abilities

With the termination of the decades-old wheeling service through North Jersey and the near-term retirement of the Indian Point Nuclear Station, PJM is reviewing its ability to import power during an emergency.

PJM’s Mark Sims said the study of its capacity emergency transfer objective (CETO) and capacity emergency transfer limit (CETL) tests assumes a locational deliverability area (LDA) is at a 90/10 load level and in a generation-capacity emergency — in other words when the “load is high and they’re having issues with generation,” Sims said.

To ensure the system has adequate deliverability, the CETL must be equal to or greater than the CETO. Those numbers are calculated through thermal and voltage analyses. Facilities whose outage transfer distribution factors (OTDF) are more than 5% are considered in violation, as are factors more than zero on transmission lines that are 345 kV or larger. The OTDF measures how power transfers using the infrastructure being studied impact the system during an outage.

“We need to take our objective and turn it into a simulation,” Sims said. “During [an] actual emergency, operators are going to do what they can do to keep the lights on. That’s what we’re trying to reflect.”

Solar Forecast Is Coming

PJM is developing a solar forecast and will need to make several Tariff and manual changes to accommodate it, said Joe Mulhern, senior engineer and project manager. The move — mandated by FERC Order 764 — comes as PJM has seen solar installations take off, from virtually nothing in 2007 to approximately 1,000 MW today.

“It’s really just so we’re ahead of the curve on solar installation,” Mulhern said.

The aggregate forecast data will be available to members for operational planning, transmission outage coordination and generation offering and scheduling. The project is targeting implementation by the end of the year. It would only apply to front-of-the-meter solar generators.

The rule changes would also require real and reactive power telemetry for solar generators of 3 MW or greater. At the Operating Committee earlier in the week, American Electric Power’s Brock Ondayko asked why such plants would also be required to report temperatures from the backside of solar panels.

“If you want it, we’ll give it to you,” Ondayko said. “I don’t know if the information is going to be accurate or not. … It seems to me just because things could be available, I think PJM should have to think of why it’s necessary.”

Staff: Developers Have no Right to Retain Previously Proposed Projects

Transmission developers whose proposals don’t get approved will need to continue proposing them until the constraint disappears or risk another developer landing the project if it ever is approved, PJM staff told participants at the Transmission Expansion Advisory Committee meeting.

One stakeholder, who declined to be quoted by name,  asked about a “right of first refusal” policy, noting that he noticed several new proposals that had appeared to be the same as previous proposals.

“It seems kind of unfair” that a company could have proposed a project that was rejected, only to see a “copycat” receive approval for it later, he said.

PJM’s Herling said the idea was discussed at FERC when the competitive transmission rules were being developed, and the commission specifically ruled out such a provision.

“The bottom line is we start over every time,” Herling said. “You have to propose in every window if there’s congestion to be addressed.”

“Lesson learned,” the stakeholder replied.

— Rory D. Sweeney