Page 1005 – RTO Insider

December 13, 2020

NY Decarbonization Workshop Focuses on Current Tech

New York Decarbonization — Jesse Jenkins, Princeton University | *NYDPS*

It will take time to develop new technologies to help New York reach its ambitious clean energy goals, but that “is no excuse for delay in deploying solutions that are already available and ready for prime time,” Jesse Jenkins of Princeton University said last week at a state-sponsored decarbonization workshop.

More than 300 people tuned in to the workshop, held on Dec. 8 by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).

The immediate task is to figure out what different solutions might get New York to carbon neutrality as quickly and affordably as possible, interim NYSERDA CEO Doreen Harris said.

“We cannot know what will work and so must support a diverse set of technologies that can enable multiple pathways to success,” Harris said. “The issues and the needs are just too important. … To put it simply, we are running out of time to avoid the most damaging and costly impacts of global warming.”

NYSDEC Commissioner Basil Seggos | *NYDPS*

DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos said that such workshops will help educate the general public about what is possible and how the state can discover new ways of doing business.

“We are where we hope the federal government will be a year from now, which is in the trenches and working with stakeholders across all industries looking for the best and most effective ways to hit those all-important climate targets,” Seggos said.

Focus on Finance

The most efficient way to decarbonize the U.S. economy is through electrification, and the biggest impact comes in homes and apartment buildings, said Saul Griffith, founder and chief scientist at San Francisco-based incubator Otherlab and a co-founder of Rewiring America, an advocacy organization.

But it costs about $80,000/household to retrofit for the future, he said. It also takes about a generation for new hardware to win universal adoption, but the world doesn’t have that kind of time in the fight to reduce global warming. That’s why state action is needed to make low-cost financing available, as home electrification cannot fulfill its potential if left only to those who can afford it, he said.

Together with Rewiring America partner Sam Calisch, Griffith in October published a paper on residential electrification. He reported the “big conclusions” to the workshop audience.

If the country does a “good job,” it can decarbonize more than 40% of the economy through household energy consumption, while saving more than $1,000 per year per household. In a “great job” scenario of optimal regulatory environment, low-cost financing and steady technology improvements, the U.S. can save more than $2,500 per year per household. Applying the same technologies and approaches to the commercial sector would eliminate about 65% of its emissions.

“We don’t need any miracle technologies to completely decarbonize American households,” Griffith said.

Emerging Tech

Scott Litzelman, program director at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), said that long-duration energy storage (LDES) is going to become more important as the economy decarbonizes.

“The duty cycle and markets for LDES will be different, and the cost and performance are going to have to look different from the lithium-ion batteries that dominate today,” Litzelman said. “Energy arbitrage and ancillary services can be satisfied now with current technologies, as you don’t need more than four hours of duration to do storage applications today.”

The future is about adding new renewables to the grid, he said, and ARPA-E’s interest is in how storage complements the increasing amount. LDES can help mitigate various risks, such as intermittency, demand uncertainty and price volatility.

Sunita Satyapal, director of DOE’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office, said the fuel cell industry just passed 1 GW in terms of global shipments, “so it’s really starting to be commercially viable,” with a 25-fold increase in electrolysis and a doubling in sales of fuel-cell vehicles.

Julio Friedmann, senior research scholar at the Center for Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, stressed the importance of carbon capture and storage (CCS), noting the roughly 500 GT of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions in the environment.

“There is only one way to stabilize the environment, and that is net-zero emissions everywhere. … In order to balance the global residual emissions, we’re probably going to need an industry twice the size of the oil and gas industry working in reverse,” Friedmann said.

Anchors of a net-zero economy include hydrogen, zero-carbon electricity and CCS. “I often think of these anchors in the context of four ‘Rs’ to get to zero: reduce, reuse, recycle and remove,” Friedmann said. “These carbon-management technologies are meant to be a complement to everything else … and CCS is the Swiss Army knife of deep decarbonization.”

For example, roasting coffee produces two bags of CO₂ for every bag of beans processed, “but today you can take that CO₂, put it in a 3D printer and make it into a cup to drink your coffee,” he said.

Environmental Justice Roundtable

New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) mandates that the state consume 70% renewable electricity by 2030 and 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040. It also requires that 40% of the benefits of state investments in clean energy reaches disadvantaged communities, which suffer disproportionate health risks by being located near the dirtiest of oil- and gas-fired peaker plants. (See New York Holds Final CLCPA Emissions Hearings.)

The decarbonization workshop closed with an environmental justice panel that included Annel Hernandez, associate director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance and a member of the state’s Climate Action Council.

“One of the specific campaigns we have going right now that is most relevant to this conversation is our fight to displace the peaker plants in New York City that are disproportionately sited in the communities that we represent,” Hernandez said.

“In Astoria, Queens, right now, NRG [Energy] is in the process of trying to repower one of their peaker plants,” Hernandez said. The company says it is “in compliance with the CLCPA because of the off chance that they can convert to green hydrogen by 2040.”

But green hydrogen technology is still rooted in fossil fuels, she said, “so we are very concerned about what the emissions profile of that is, what the energy intensity of that is and what the impact on the local community is, and what other infrastructure would have to be put in place,” Hernandez said. “There are a lot of outstanding questions that have yet to be answered, and we cannot let them to build brand new fossil fuels in New York City after we passed the most aggressive climate policy in the country.”

Gopal Dayaneni of environmental advocacy group Movement Generation said that “understanding the climate crisis and its consequences … has everything to do with how we frame the problem. If we look only at CO₂, not only do you misunderstand the problem, you don’t come up with the right solutions.”

December 13, 2020January 3, 2024

Oregon Governor Plots Western Roadmap for EVs

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) on Thursday set out a vision for building electric vehicle charging infrastructure across the West that was conspicuously light on environmental imperatives but heavy on economic ones.

In fact, Brown’s keynote speech at the virtual annual meeting of the Western Governors’ Association (WGA) made no mention of climate change, despite the fact that transportation electrification is a key factor in decarbonization strategies for states across the U.S., including Oregon, which is pursuing greenhouse gas reductions under Brown’s Executive Order 20-04. (See Oregon PUC Plans Take on Decarbonization.)

The omission may have been a concession to the spirit of bipartisanship touted by the WGA, an organization comprising governors from 22 states with widely divergent policies and perspectives on global warming.

As WGA’s current chair, Brown established the Electric Vehicles Roadmap Initiative as the signature effort of her one-year term, which began in July. In her speech, Brown said transportation electrification is “an issue that bolsters our current economies and creates a roadmap both literally and figuratively to the future.”

She noted that a number of Western states are working to encourage individuals and business to adopt EVs “because we recognize that a robust and efficient transportation sector is key to meeting economic goals and connecting businesses to regional and international markets.”

The governor also played to regional sympathies regarding energy independence.

“The use of electric vehicles also allows us to power our transportation system with energy produced right here in our Western states. As we all know, the wind in our plains, the sun in our deserts and the water in our rivers are less subject to the global geopolitical forces that influence oil markets,” she said.

Brown pointed to the “good news” of collaborative efforts already occurring across state — and international — lines, including the West Coast Electric Highway, an agreement among California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia to build a network of fast-charging stations every 25 to 50 miles along Interstate 5 and U.S. Route 101 “to allow electric vehicles users to travel the length of the West Coast with the same certainty they would have if they were driving a gas vehicle.”

In a “shining example of bipartisan collaboration” farther inland, Brown said, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming have joined up to create the Regional Electric Vehicle West Plan to foster EV travel in the Intermountain region.

“These efforts are born out of a mutual understanding that facilitating the use of electric vehicles isn’t a political imperative; it’s an economic one, making it easier for both consumers and businesses to travel and transport goods. Using electric vehicles frees up household incomes and yields increased profits,” Brown said.

The governor said she believes the region is “on the precipice of a historic transition” to be ushered in by coordinated planning and investment related to EV infrastructure.

“My chair’s initiative is working to coordinate technical aspects between existing subregional EV collaboratives and encourage participation from our Western states not yet engaged in EV network planning,” she said.

Brown’s goal: to reach an expanded regional agreement on EV charging by the next annual WGA meeting in a year.

“Fortunately, we are already well on our way,” Brown said. “We have held seven work sessions. We’ve brought together officials from the public sector with electric utilities, electric vehicle manufacturers and charging station manufacturers to chart a coordinated path forward to the expanded use of EVs. We’ve deliberated opportunities for states to support the growth of the consumer, medium-duty and heavy-duty EV sectors, [and] promote investment by utilities and their rate structures.”

Next year will see “the hard work of synthesizing the findings of these sessions” into a potential interstate agreement, Brown said. WGA will hold a series of public webinars to explore the expansion of EV use in the West.

Brown has asked her team to determine how to ensure the success of a potential agreement. “An agreement is only as successful as its implementation, and I’d like each party to be equally committed to the expansion of EV infrastructure across the entire West.”

“This work is emblematic of the spirit of the Western Governors’ Association, building on the successful efforts of individual states to create mutual benefit for all of us,” Brown said.

December 13, 2020

MISO Board of Director Briefs: Dec. 10, 2020

MISO executives last week commended outgoing director Baljit “Bal” Dail for his decade-plus influence on the RTO’s technology decisions.

CEO John Bear joked that he was “in denial” about Dail’s departure. He noted that Dail was the founder and sole chair of the Board of Directors’ Technology Committee.

“Bal, you’re the godfather of change to MISO. You challenged us and made us better,” he said. “Every time I needed you, you were available. From the center of my heart, thank you.”

MISO Board of Directors — Director Baljit Dail in December 2019 | © *RTO Insider*

“It’s amazing to think that when I joined the board, there was no technology committee,” said Dail, who presided over his final committee meeting last week.

“He’s been a wonderful influence to this organization, and he’ll be hard to replace,” Board Chair Phyllis Currie said.

MISO selected former PepsiCo Chief Information Officer Jody Davids to replace the term-limited Dail on the board. (See PepsiCo ex-CIO Makes 1st Woman Majority on MISO Board.) Dail served 12 years, three more than technically allowed through a special waiver that allowed the board to retain his technological know-how.

The outgoing director commended MISO on its work so far to gradually swap out its legacy market system for a new, modular platform. The grid operator set up a private cloud this year with non-critical infrastructure protection data and began testing its new market user interface with members.

“He certainly helped and influenced the [market platform replacement] program when we initiated it in 2017,” MISO Vice President of Market System Enhancements Todd Ramey said of Dail.

“Having been someone who has run large IT projects … As the project size increases, the likelihood of staying on-time and on-budget decreases dramatically,” Dail said during the committee’s Dec. 8 teleconference. “This is my last Technology Committee [meeting], so I will not be here when this thing lands, but I feel very comfortable with where we’re at. And anyone who knows me knows I don’t say that lightly. I’ve never seen a project of this size and this complexity land this well.”

However, he said his “passing counsel” would be for staff to look for any efficiencies that could accelerate the completion deadline, even if it does increase costs. He said “project fatigue” could set in among employees on a project with such a protracted timeline.

Virtual Environment Bleeds into 2021

Preparing for a prolonged pandemic recovery, MISO has planned a virtual format for both its March and June quarterly Board Weeks. The grid operator doesn’t anticipate a return to in-person stakeholder meetings until the beginning of July.

“We’re also showing a little bit of optimism by planning our September and December meetings in different locations,” Currie said. “But as you know, things can change, and a lot depends on what we can do as a country to control the pandemic.”

“It’s been a challenging year with external factors,” MISO General Counsel Andre Porter observed.

Currie said MISO’s virtual meeting format for 2020 wasn’t easy to manage.

“But clearly, the MISO community has risen to the challenge,” she said.

“I think anyone would say it’s been an extraordinary year … a year marked by both tragedy and gratitude,” Bear said.

He said nobody could have predicted the popularity of dress-shirts-and-sweatpants combinations, healthy sales of home gym equipment and priceless toilet paper. More seriously, Bear said MISO was rocked by “back-to-back-to-back storms, social unrest, the pandemic and working remotely.”

However, he said MISO has accomplished much throughout the year to address the seismic change in its resources and their times of availability.

MISO Budget Rises in 2021

CFO Melissa Brown said MISO will finish 2020 under budget because of reductions in travel and training expenses and a higher-than-normal employee vacancy rate, all driven by COVID-19.

MISO estimated it will spend $257.1 million in base operating expenses by year-end, almost $8 million lower than the $264.7 million it was allocated.

On the other hand, staff said they would finish 2020 slightly over its $50.2 million project investment budget, at $50.8 million. Brown said the market platform replacement and building renovations drove the overage.

In 2021, the grid operator is planning a nearly $380 million total budget, a 3.2% increase over 2020. Base operating expenses will take a $270.7 million share of the budget. The budget also calls for $50.1 million in project investments and $59 million in other operating expenses.

Brown said MISO will engage in more IT spending and will have more computer maintenance costs as its systems are upgraded. She also expects to spend more in 2022 and beyond as travel, training and in-person meetings return to pre-COVID levels and as MISO enacts more measures to maintain reliability in a renewable-rich portfolio.

Bear said it’s going to become more expensive to manage an increasingly more complex system in the coming years; however, he predicted that MISO will continue to deliver value for members.

December 13, 2020

MISO Members Request More Access to Directors

MISO members again last week asked the RTO to facilitate less stage-managed access by stakeholders to its Board of Directors.

In the past some members have recommended MISO host technical presentations with stakeholders and board participants. Others have said the grid operator could add nonpublic meetings that allow sectors to meet with directors. (See MISO Members Back Voting Rights for New Sector.)

Speaking during the Advisory Committee’s teleconference Wednesday, Clean Grid Alliance Executive Director Beth Soholt said all 11 MISO sectors should appear before the board annually to discuss their top three priorities for the year.

‎DC Energy’s Bruce Bleiweis said MISO could use additional and different means for all stakeholders to interact with directors.

“Advisory Committee meetings are usually four- to five-hour affairs, and we only got to talk to them for 90 minutes on one topic at this meeting,” he said, adding that even during the 90 minutes, committee members were allowed to speak, but not stakeholders.

“It’s difficult to interact with the board during [quarterly Board Week] receptions because I feel that they’re being handled by MISO,” Indiana Utility Regulatory Commissioner Sarah Freeman said.

Sustainable FERC Project Director John Moore said it might help if MISO held an additional annual meeting where members can discuss the RTO’s governance and concerns about the stakeholder process with directors.

“I’m not sure we have that kind of conversation with the board now. I’m not a fan of having just another large, hot-topic style discussion,” Moore. “I think governance is a big issue.”

Gabel Associates’ Travis Stewart said that the Advisory Committee’s hot-topic discussion last week on FERC Order 2222 was the first real policy-driven discussion of 2020. (See Members Counsel MISO on Order 2222 Prep.) He pointed out that the first quarterly hot-topic discussion was canceled, the second focused on the COVID-19 response and the third centered on MISO’s relationships with its neighboring systems.

“I appreciate that some of these discussions have been condensed because we’re virtual this year,” Stewart said. He added that curtailed discussion during board committee meetings seemed to be the norm long before the pandemic took hold.

Advisory Committee Liaison Bob Kuzman took notes and said staff would discuss the suggestions.

Advisory Committee Chair Audrey Penner said members proposed solid ideas for more board engagement. She suggested MISO implement one or two in 2021, keeping in mind that any new meetings or format does not have to be permanent.

“In 2021, we can implement an idea, and if it doesn’t work, we can revisit it again in 2022,” she said.

December 13, 2020

Members Counsel MISO on Order 2222 Prep

MISO members say the grid operator needs both hard work and new faces to comply with FERC’s sweeping distributed energy directive, Order 2222.

Referencing what staff have nicknamed the “two-by-four” order, MISO’s Todd Hillman, senior vice president and chief customer officer joked last week during an Advisory Committee call that he’d like to use the lumber to “hit myself in the head with when I read the order.”

The Organization of MISO States’ president-elect and North Dakota regulator Julie Fedorchak said complying with the order will require different people than the usual stakeholder suspects. She said MISO will need ideas from utility operators, many of whom will be new to the stakeholder process.

As an example, Fedorchak said she didn’t think any distributed energy resource aggregators were participating in the teleconference Dec. 9.

“I think that’s a noteworthy absence,” she said.

FERC in September ordered RTOs and ISOs to open their markets to DER aggregations, now largely limited to providing demand response (Order 2222, RM18-9). (See FERC Opens RTO Markets to DER Aggregation.)

MISO stakeholders last month created a DER task force to navigate compliance with Order 2222. MISO hopes to have a plan drafted by March. (See MISO Says Communication Key to DER Order.)

“[A] compliance filing at the end of June is a pretty tight sprint,” Hillman said.

MISO Order 2222 — NIPSCO solar array | *Inovateus Solar*

Sustainable FERC Project Director John Moore called Order 2222 the commission’s “most significant” order to date and one that “reflects the dynamically changing nature of the power grid.” He said the order recognizes increasing two-way flows on the distribution system as well as the jurisdictional relationships between states, RTOs and FERC.

“This whole order seems to be a brave new world in jurisdictional questions,” MISO Director Nancy Lange said.

Moore said if compliance is well-executed, the new market participants could help MISO access more resources and assuage concern over recent maximum generation events.

He said the RTO even has a role to play in helping distribution companies develop or improve interconnection standards and get interconnection costs right.

“Interconnection costs are a huge barrier” to generation projects, Moore said.

DTE Energy’s Nick Griffin, representing the transmission-dependent utilities sector, said the order could supplant the need for some transmission investment as it could maximize the distribution system’s use and efficiency.

“It might also put pressure on the MISO interconnection queue,” he said.

“We have to make sure the distribution utility has the information necessary to plan and manage their system,” Otter Tail Power’s Stacy Hebert said.

Several members asked staff to ensure DER electrons aren’t double counted at the retail and wholesale levels.

Griffin said MISO should provide its wholesale DER transaction data to distribution companies, making the output easier to track.

“We will need a lot of input and interaction with our stakeholders,” said MISO Executive Vice President of Market and Grid Strategy Richard Doying.

MISO has about 11 GW worth of demand response resources currently participating in the capacity market, mostly through “decade-old utility programs,” Doying said. An OMS survey of DER resources last year indicated an additional 4 GW worth of capacity on distribution systems, much of it rooftop solar.

“We don’t have a good handle on the amount or types we’re going to see,” Doying said. He said that MISO is working diligently to determine how many and what kinds of DER will participate at the wholesale level.

December 11, 2020

WECC Taking Wait-and-See on COVID Measures

With the COVID-19 pandemic threatening to overwhelm hospitals, WECC is in no hurry to bring employees back to work at its Salt Lake City headquarters, CEO Melanie Frye said Wednesday.

“If you had asked me a year ago, would we ever be able to put a 140 WECC staff at home for nine months and have them successfully deliver on the [organization’s] scorecard and the goals we’ve set for ourselves, I probably would’ve lost that bet. I’m so proud of our team,” Frye said during her quarterly report to WECC’s Board of Directors.

Frye told the board WECC will maintain its work-from-home policy at least until Feb. 1, 2021.

“We really want to see what the impacts of the holiday season are. We’re not going to rush to bring folks back into the office,” she said.

Frye said WECC is “encouraged” by the news that a vaccine could be approved in the U.S. as soon as this week. “That may make a difference for us, but we’ll continue to be cautious in how we proceed.”

Any reopening of the office will be “gradual,” with staff invited to return on a voluntary basis “at first, with all of the necessary precautions,” she said. WECC’s reopening plan includes reduced capacity in offices, masking and physical distancing, with no in-person meetings and limited travel for staff.

WECC COVID-19 — The entrance to WECC headquarters in downtown Salt Lake City | © *ERO Insider*

Frye said WECC has learned a lot about the ability of its staff to work remotely and the technologies that enable the practice. She lauded the staff at WECC and the industry at large for their “resilience” and ability to pivot from traditional in-person meetings to “creative, innovative” ways to continue the same work virtually.

“In the new year we’ll also start looking at what our post-COVID world will look like from an organization standpoint and what the right mix of flexibility and potential work-from-home is for the staff while also making sure we’re focusing on continuing the WECC culture,” she said.

Regarding the culture, Frye said she was “thrilled” to report that a recent employee engagement survey indicated a high level of satisfaction among WECC staff. Denison Consulting completed the survey last month.

“I will say I had a little trepidation going into that because of the pandemic and just the fact that we hadn’t been directly connected face-to-face with our team,” Frye said.

The results showed that, compared with other surveyed organizations worldwide, the regional entity scored in the 90th percentile in many areas among staff for perceptions of adaptability, mission, involvement and consistency. “Stakeholder focus” was the one area that fell below that level, “so we have a little bit of work to do there,” she said.

Frye pointed out the survey had a 94% response rate. “For those of you who have conducted surveys in organization, I think you’ll agree with me that’s almost unheard of to have that high of a response rate,” she said.

Peak Donation

Frye also reported that WECC last week signed an agreement to accept a $4 million donation (previously estimated at $3.8 million) from Peak Reliability, representing funds left in the accounts of the Western Interconnection’s former reliability coordinator after it settled obligations in the wake of its dissolution a year ago. The board approved the move at its September meeting. (See WECC Board Approves New Chair, Long-term Strategy.)

WECC COVID — WECC CEO Melanie Frye | © *ERO Insider*

WECC officials will now work with the board, industry stakeholders and the Western Interconnection Regional Advisory Body (WIRAB) “to identify what would be the best use of” the money, Frye said.

“We do want to make sure to focus on the guiding principles of doing something that aligns with the WECC reliability risk priorities, as well as something that would be enduring, something that would potentially enhance WECC’s ability to be responsive to reliability challenges,” she said.

WECC staff will draw up proposed ideas to be shared next year with WIRAB and WECC’s Member Advisory Committee and standing committees in order to seek input and advice. A final list of recommendations will be shared with the board “at some point,” Frye said.

“But I want to emphasize that we’re not rushing to spend this money. We need to make sure that it’s used for something that would be of high value,” she said.

December 11, 2020

WECC Says Extreme Events Require Forecast, RA Changes

Western balancing authorities should determine what caused the drastic errors in their load and generation forecasts during August’s massive heat wave and fix their forecasting process before next summer, WECC said this week.

That recommendation was just one of eight the regional entity offered the region’s BAs based on findings from its event analysis of the mid-August “heat storm” that gripped much of the West for nearly a week. The weather event prompted WECC Findings Show Complexity of Heat Wave Event.)

The heat wave was the topic of a technical session at a virtual version of WECC’s quarterly series of Board of Directors meetings. Tim Reynolds, WECC senior engineer, opened his presentation by saying there are two main reasons to perform an event analysis.

“One is you’re expected to, which is not the most ideal, because you’re doing the bare minimum checking the boxes, and you want to move on,” Reynolds said. “The second reason is more of learning mentality, and that’s definitely the approach the [WECC] team [took] for the analysis for the heat wave.”

WECC broke its heat wave event findings and recommendations into four categories: high load demand, use of transmission, inaccurate forecasting and resource adequacy.

Under the “high load demand” category, WECC determined that the Western Interconnection set a new peak record of 162,017 MW on Aug. 18, continuing a trend in which summer peak loads in the West have been increasing steadily over the past 10 years, creating increased competition for generating resources. Reynolds noted that some northern balancing authority areas that were previously winter peaking are becoming “dual peakers,” with both summer and winter peaks.

Reynolds said that 11 Western BAs were placed into an energy emergency alert (EEA) state during the event, with six elevated to the highest alert level — EEA 3 — but only CAISO was forced to shed load Aug. 14-15.

The event also indicated to WECC that reliability coordinators (RCs) and BAs may be applying NERC standards BAL-002-3 and BAL-002-WECC-2a inconsistently. The first standard ensures that a BA balances resources with demand and returns its area control error to defined values after a contingency event. The second specifies the quantity and types of contingency reserves required to operate in normal and abnormal conditions.

Reynolds said when an RC invokes an EEA, BAL-002-WECC-2a allows the affected BA to use multiple types of resources to meet its contingency reserve requirement but prohibits it from dropping below the required reserve to address a real-time emergency.

In response, WECC recommended that the regional entity work with industry experts to determine whether the standard should be changed to allow BAs to temporarily drop below the requirement. It also recommended further collaboration with experts to produce a document that provides more guidance to how BAs and RCs should respond to EEAs.

Unscheduled Flows, Unqualified Paths

Reynolds prefaced his description of WECC’s “use of transmission” findings by explaining how transmission flows in the West generally move in a circular fashion from north to south, with output from Northwest generation traveling on multiple transmission paths to serve loads in California and the Southwest.

Months before the heat wave, a windstorm damaged the Northwest AC Intertie (NWACI), a major line connecting the Bonneville Power Administration control area with California, reducing its rating by up to 1,250 MW. At the same time, a 750-MW derate on Path 3 limited transfers out of British Columbia. Transmission operators were able to increase the NWACI’s rating over Aug. 14-15, but derated it again after the system became unstable due to unscheduled flows.

Reynolds said the region’s existing procedure to mitigate unscheduled flows could not be applied to the NWACI because the line is not considered a “qualified path” under the Western Interconnection Unscheduled Flow Mitigation Plan (USFMP). As a result, the plan could not be invoked to coordinate phase shifters in the region because there were no unscheduled flows occurring on qualified paths at the time.

To avoid a similar outcome in the future, WECC recommended that RCs and BAs use phase shifters to help mitigate unscheduled flows beyond qualified paths. It also advised BAs to determine whether more transmission paths should be included in the USFMP.

WECC additionally recommended that RCs, BAs and transmission operators prepare for next summer by developing operating plans for a similar event. TOs should also work with their RCs to explore any phase angle concerns and establish “appropriate” system operating limits and interconnection reliability operating limits, WECC said.

Forecast Errors

A joint root-cause analysis of the blackouts by CAISO, the California Public Utilities Commission and the state’s Energy Commission found that under-scheduling by the state’s utilities contributed significantly to the ISO’s blackouts and subsequent EEAs. (See CAISO Says Constrained Tx Contributed to Blackouts.) WECC’s analysis has extended that finding to other areas of the West that declared alerts.

“What is interesting is when we asked the BAs that were in an EEA as to the cause of them being placed in it, some of the responses stated that their demand was higher than forecasted and it was difficult to find generation to purchase — so they had to go into an EEA,” Reynolds said. Other BAs told WECC that wind and solar production on Aug. 17-18 fell short of day-ahead forecasts, preventing them from meeting demand obligations.

“The BAs need to go back to this event, find the errors in their forecast leading up to it and make the changes needed to prepare for next summer,” Reynolds said.

“The longer out you can accurately forecast things, the more you can do ahead of time … like bringing back generation or transmission lines that were out for service,” he said.

Read, Understand, Follow

The California joint agency report and WECC have both pointed to outmoded resource adequacy planning as a central cause of the August energy emergencies. A key part of the problem, WECC found, is how current RA planning methods account for the contribution of the variable renewable resources that failed to perform as expected in intervals of peak demand during the heat wave.

That risk could be compounded as the West increasingly relies on renewable generation because of state clean energy mandates.

“From 2013 to 2019, we see overall about a 1% change in total net generation … which is not a significant change,” Reynolds noted, pointing to a bar graph in his presentation. “However, we do see an increased change in the use of solar and wind with a decrease in the baseload generation.”

“Resource adequacy usually forecasts a year out,” said Matt Elkins, WECC manager of performance analysis and resource adequacy. “We’re not really into forecasting day-ahead or anything like that, but you can see the same thing” with respect to the impact of variability on predictions.

Elkins said WECC found that current methods for planning RA are not reliable for extreme weather events. “We have to change the way we do things, and I think that’s what we’re getting at here.”

WECC’s recommendation? That industry participants “read, understand and follow” the recommendations to be included in WECC’s Western Assessment of Resource Adequacy, to be released later this month as a supplement NERC’s Long-Term Reliability Assessment for the entire North American grid.

Elkins provided board members a peek at those recommendations during their meeting Wednesday, which followed a technical session on the heat storm Tuesday. Included among the recommendations is a suggestion that the West adopt a dynamic reserve margin to better ensure reliability for all hours as more variable resources come into the system.

‘A Lot of Communication’

At the end of the Tuesday’s technical session, WECC Director Jim Avery asked how the heat wave analysis will be shared with state regulators.

“Will that be something the [Western Interconnection Regional Advisory Body] does? Is that something you’ll be reaching out to offer the regulators in the region? Because I know several regulators … raised concerns about what happened this summer, and if we’re part of the answer to explaining it, how are we getting the right information to them?” Avery asked.

“I think this is a very important message, and I think our plan will be to have targeted conversations with WIRAB and others to really inform them on what we’re seeing and what our plans are to mitigate some of these issues,” said Branden Sudduth, WECC vice president of reliability planning and performance analysis.

Avery noted also that the analysis covered the variability around renewable resources and weather, “but with extreme weather you get derates on baseload. How did that play out?”

“That’s an analysis we want to do,” Elkins replied.

Director Dan Arvizu asked about the biggest opportunities for improving forecasts. “Is it about the modeling? Is it about the computational capacity?” Arvizu asked.

“I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention from the team that it’s definitely been computational time,” Elkins said. “That’s one of the biggest problems with probabilistic studies to date is that the computing capability has not been there. We’re just now breaking into that.”

“And also, communication. … A lot of communication in the entire interconnection needs to be occurring,” he added.

December 11, 2020

Texas RE Says Goodbye to CEO, Chair

The Texas Reliability Entity on Wednesday bid farewell to CEO Lane Lanford, Chair Fred Day and Director Delores Etter during the regional entity’s annual meeting.

The virtual format frustrated incoming CEO Jim Albright, who lamented not being able to rub shoulders one last time with outgoing board members.

“This sucks,” Albright said. “The next time we meet together, you need to come to the meeting so we can have a proper sendoff.”

Albright and other board members took turns honoring the departing officials for their tenure with Texas RE in what Lanford said “looks suspiciously like a roast.”

“You created an environment for all of us to be successful,” Albright told Lanford, who served as the Texas Public Utility Commission’s executive director for 17 years after leaving the banking industry.

Lanford joined Texas RE in 2010, becoming CEO two years later, “fortunately for us,” Albright said, crediting him with growing the entity as a separate extension of ERCOT.

Day, who served two terms as chair during his 10 years on the board, reviewed Texas RE’s accomplishments during 2020. They included a third extension of its contract with NERC; a 10-year lease at a cheaper, less congested location in Austin; and the Nomination Committee filling two independent directors’ positions on the board and choosing Albright to replace Lanford. (See Texas RE Names Albright as New CEO.)

“Jim is well prepared for this. He’s been training for an opportunity like this,” Day said.

Day and Etter also credited Lanford with helping to improve the REs’ relationship with NERC.

“Our relationship at the NERC level is much better than it was 10 years ago, I can assure you,” Day said during the board’s meeting, which followed the annual meeting and Member Representatives Committee (MRC) session.

“We have a lot more say about what happens than we did 10 years ago. And it’s not that people didn’t listen 10 years ago. I just think we have more influence, if you will, on the final outcome of what is going to be done,” he said. “I think one of the main reasons for that is people like Lane Lanford and others who have worked with NERC … trying to convince them that the only way for [the ERO Enterprise] to really work the way it should work, and the way it needs to work, is to build some trust.”

Etter agreed. “I think Lane had a lot to do with kind of organizing the other heads of the [regional] entities and doing it in a very professional, respectful way,” she said. “I know when I was on the NERC board [2004-2005], there was not any people from the entities that sat at the head table, and one of things Lane did was change that.”

Albright, who joined Texas RE in 2013 and was previously the COO, said he was honored to be leading the organization. “[The staff] gets all the credit for us continuing to do what we do [and] the consistency we’ve had over the years,” Albright said.

“I think way back to January of this year; it seems like a long time ago. We were thinking we were going to execute the plan that was in place but in March; we were faced with something completely different,” Lanford said. “I’m sure a lot of things we’ve done this year will be carried forward in new workplan. There were a lot of positives that came out of this.”

Lanford pointed to the increase in workshop participation and the ability for staff to perform their work remotely, thanks to Texas RE’s home office setups.

“That’s paid off, because we haven’t missed a beat,” he said.

MRC Meeting

The MRC met briefly in the morning, reviewing staff’s quarterly reports and regulatory updates.

ERCOT’s Christine Hasha, who chairs the grid operator’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Working Group, reminded members that CIP-008-6 (Cyber Security-Incident Reporting and Response Planning) takes effect on Jan. 1.

Texas RE’s outreach effort has been 100% virtual since March, staff said. Still, webinars and workshops attracted more than 2,300 participants this year, almost double the number reached in each of the previous two years.

The RE has a net increase of 10 members entering 2021 for a total of 110. The generation segment increased by 12 members, to total 68, but cooperative membership dropped by two, to 11.

Oncor’s Eric Shaw told the MRC that he will chair the NERC Standards Review Forum’s reliability, security and compliance efforts in 2021, with ERCOT’s Matt Stout serving as vice chair.

Return of In-person Meetings

Albright said the Texas RE is hoping for a return to in-person meetings in April, saying its original planned January return is not realistic. There will be no on-site audits until people are comfortable with them, he added.

“Obviously, we’re concerned about everyone’s healthy and safety,” Albright said. “We don’t want to push things too quickly.”

Lanford said the RE’s new, more spacious offices will be near ERCOT’s. “We can’t create any kind of social distancing” in its current office, he said. Working from the office is voluntary and limited to 50% of the total staff.

Change to Annual Meeting?

The board approved Vice Chair Milton Lee as chair to replace Day and newcomer Suzanne Spaulding as vice chair. Spaulding is joining the board as an independent director for a three-year term beginning Jan. 1. (See “Committee Selects Ex-DHS, CIA Counsel as Director,” Texas Reliability Entity Briefs: Sept. 3, 2020.)

In one of his final actions, Day urged the board to consider changing its bylaws to move the annual meeting to February from December.

“We have so many other things we need to get done at the December meeting,” Day said. “It’s not quite as busy in February … and also it would be nice to have a recap of the full year rather than doing a report in December. Hopefully, that’s something that, Milton, you and others can make happen.”

Corporate Goals Added to Work Plan

In his report to the board, Albright said he was adding four corporate goals to the annual work plan priorities document: integrating “the realization of ERO transformation aspirations”; intentional engagement with stakeholders; enhancing the information technology and security program; and promoting diversity and inclusion.

Albright said he will report to the board quarterly on progress in meeting the goals. He told the board he would “let you know if there’s any issues going on where we might not be making key objectives for the year. If we’ve already hit it in the second quarter, we’re going to let you know that too,” he said.

Albright said engaging with stakeholders will be particularly important next year because of the continuation of remote or hybrid operations from the coronavirus pandemic.

Texas RE 2021 corporate goals and key objectives | *Texas RE*

“New entrants to our region, when we sign new people up, we’re going to get out there in front of them. We want to meet them. We don’t want the first time that they talk to us [to be] when we go out to audit them. We want it to be up front. We want to engage with them and let them know how we can help them.”

He also said he wants to “create a cybersecurity awareness outside of the compliance area.”

“We’re not talking about compliance; we’re just talking about best practices: spreading information with the industry participants. We’re looking to be able to leverage our relationship with the [Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center], and the best way we can do that is to make sure it’s outside of the compliance space.”

Distribution Provider Survey

Joseph Younger, director of enforcement, reliability standards and registration, briefed the board on the RE’s survey of its 37 distribution providers, the first such survey since 2015.

Younger said the survey was in keeping with the ERO’s risk-based approach by determining whether each of the distribution providers were properly registered.

“Can you be registered in a different way, either a distribution provider with just [underfrequency load shedding] or taken off the registry altogether?” Younger asked. He said the preliminary review indicates “a number of entities are likely to be deregistered or have their registration footprint reduced.”

“It will help us in the long run to really streamline all of the areas of our program because this is really the foundation for every engagement, every enforcement activity. All those touchpoints start here.”

Expanding Resource Adequacy Beyond Peak

Director of Reliability Services Mark Henry told the board the RE is “going to look very good” in this year’s NERC Long Term Reliability Assessment (LTRA) “compared with previous years.”

“We did very well this summer with what [resources] we had; how that will shape up in the future, I don’t know,” he said. “We want the LTRA to look at a lot more than peak adequacy. We also want to start thinking about different ways to measure that. … There’s a consideration of a market-based resource adequacy measure going on in our region. There’s also consideration of different approaches that are used in other parts of the world. So, you’re going to see a lot of discussion about that over the next year, I believe.”

December 11, 2020January 15, 2025

Southeast Utilities Announce Regional Energy Market

Eighteen Southeastern utilities and cooperatives, led by Duke Energy, Southern Co. and the Tennessee Valley Authority, announced Friday they will seek FERC approval to launch a 15-minute energy market next year.

The Southeast Energy Exchange Market (SEEM) will be “an overlay to the existing bilateral market to increase efficiency and opportunities for wholesale economic energy purchases and sales,” Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress said in an informational filing to the North Carolina Utilities Commission. The system will provide automated matching, reservation and tagging functions.

Map of proposed Southeast Energy Exchange Market | SEEM

“In the existing bilateral market, buyers and sellers have to find each other. The SEEM will increase efficiencies by using an electronic algorithm-based wholesale energy trading platform to match willing buyers and sellers in the Southeast region who are already able to transact under existing power sales agreements and authorizations.”

Duke said the market will be under the sole jurisdiction of FERC and that it will not replace or change existing federal balancing authority or transmission provider reliability requirements.

The agreement is not a pooling agreement or a wholesale power sales agreement, Duke said. It will use otherwise unused transmission capacity, and the transactions matched via SEEM will be consummated under existing bilateral agreements between the buyer and seller, Duke said.

The company’s filing included the SEEM “platform agreement” and other governing documents.

Listed as founding members of SEEM are: Associated Electric Cooperative, Dalton Utilities, Dominion Energy South Carolina, Duke Energy Carolinas, Duke Energy Progress, ElectriCities of North Carolina, Georgia System Operations Corporation, Georgia Transmission Corporation, LG&E and KU Energy, MEAG Power, NCEMC, Oglethorpe Power Corp., PowerSouth, Santee Cooper, Southern Co.’s Georgia Power and Mississippi Power, and TVA.

The companies said an independent third-party consultant estimated the market will provide members a total of $40 million to $50 million in annual savings in the near-term, potentially growing to $100 million to $150 million annually “as more solar and other variable energy resources are added.”

Not an RTO

The companies made it clear that SEEM is not a gateway to an RTO. “Importantly, SEEM members maintain local control of their generation and transmission assets, and participation is voluntary. Many of the member companies operate within state guidelines and directives, so having full control over their respective generation and transmission resources is an important governing requirement,” they said.

“We’re assessing the details released by the utilities today, but we’ve been suspect about this from the beginning,” Frank Rambo, the head of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s clean energy and air program, said Friday. “If your goals are truly to encourage renewables and lower costs, this is not what you propose and not where you stop. You would go much further in reforming the wholesale market.”

“While we are still digesting the filing, the Southeast Energy Exchange Market proposal would benefit from a number of improvements,” said Sean Gallagher, vice president of state affairs at the Solar Energy Industries Association. “The proposal is missing critical details about renewable energy integration as well as a mechanism to prevent price fixing. Both issues will ultimately impact ratepayers and are a hallmark of monopoly utility power. We support a competitive marketplace in the Southeast. Stakeholder input will be a critical part of this effort, and we look forward to engaging with regulators to help improve this proposal and create more opportunities for competition.”

When word of the prospective market broke in July following months of secret negotiations, Maggie Shober, director of power market analytics for the Southeast Alliance for Clean Energy, said it appeared to be an effort to avoid legislative action to create an RTO in the Carolinas. (See Southeast Utilities Talking Regional Market.)

North Carolina House Bill 958, introduced in April 2019, would authorize the North Carolina Utilities Commission to require the state’s investor-owned utilities to establish or join a regional transmission entity after determining such a move would be in the public interest. It was referred to the House Committee on Rules, Calendar and Operations of the House.

South Carolina lawmakers introduced legislation (S. 998 and H. 4940) in January 2020 that would establish an Electricity Market Reform Measures Study Committee to study the benefits of electricity market reforms and whether the legislature should adopt them. In February, H. 4940 crossed over to the Senate.

Shober said her organization is pleased with the utilities’ proposal for SEEM, calling it “a potential stepping stone toward letting clean energy resources compete with existing fossil generation on an even playing field.

“The governance and stakeholder structures matter,” she added. “The settlement method is unique and has not been tested under a similar setup anywhere in the country. I suspect that these will be some of the key discussion points as SEEM moves through the regulatory process.”

Administrator

The market will be run by a Southeast EEM Administrator and overseen by a four-member Operating Committee (two members representing investor-owned utilities and one each from cooperatives and governmental utilities) and a Membership Board.

Each member will get at least one vote on the Membership Board (the “Popular Vote”) plus a number of votes based on its share of the net energy for load (“Net Energy for Load Vote”).

One quarter of the market’s costs will be allocated on a per-member basis with the remainder allocated based on net load shares.

A spokesman for Associated Electric Cooperative said startup costs are expected to be less than $5 million with annual operating costs of $1 million to $3 million.

December 11, 2020

MISO Monitor Reviews Blustery Fall

Fall in the MISO footprint was a study in record wind production — in more ways than one.

The quarter was defined by unprecedented hurricane activity and peak wind generation. MISO set an all-time wind output record of nearly 19 GW on Nov. 15, when wind accounted for nearly a third of all generation.

MISO Independent Market Monitor David Patton said during the RTO’s Markets Committee meeting Tuesday that installed wind capacity and output expanded by 33% and 30%, respectively, compared to last fall. But he said the record production came with a price, as more than half of the quarter’s real-time congestion was related to wind generation.

“As our wind output grows, the transmission congestion it’s causing is significant,” Patton said.

MISO acknowledged that though wind is taking an increasing portion of the resource mix, it continues to be curtailed during high production.

Patton said “dramatic” changes in wind output occurred several times during the fall, making MISO’s forecasting vital. He said that on Oct. 18, wind generation fell from 15.5 GW to 1 GW during the day. On Oct. 16, it dropped nearly 6 GW right before the evening peak.

“If MISO doesn’t see this coming, it’s like losing six nuclear units at once,” he said.

Patton said average load was down about 7% compared to normal because of a combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and moderate fall temperatures. MISO estimated that the pandemic was tied to a 4% reduction in load this fall.

A blend of lower load, lower natural gas prices and high wind output contributed to a 14% decrease in energy prices from last fall, he said.

Pandemic-muted loads are also creeping back into the seasonal picture as infections soar and local officials again limit gatherings.

“We are moving back into COVID-19 load levels, where we are about 5% below load from a normal, non-COVID world,” MISO Director of Operations Planning J.T. Smith said.

Laura Pricing in Question

Pricing issues after Hurricane Laura made landfall in Louisiana on Aug. 27 continues to be a source of debate among staff, the Monitor and stakeholders.

Patton said the storm caused $90 million in congestion costs and “effectively created a dead zone in the Lake Charles area, destroying a significant amount of distribution system lines and transmission.” He said about $10 million of the congestion costs was from MISO pricing dead buses in the area at the $3,500/MWh value of lost load (VOLL).

He questioned the logic of pricing widespread, disconnected buses at VOLL. (See Laura Pricing Has MISO Stakeholders Scratching Heads.)

“It wasn’t an area where we were resource-inadequate. … In theory, this is not a situation that warrants VOLL pricing,” he said. “We lost a lot of key transmission lines into the area, and we lost a lot of generation.”

Patton said he is working with MISO to more appropriately price the area.

“I’m sure I’ll have more to report,” he told the Board of Directors.

MISO declared local conservative operations for a month after Laura’s landfall to support restoration efforts.

Patton said that by mid-September, three generating units in the area were again able to serve load, but total restoration was not complete until mid-October.

MISO encountered “modeling challenges” in the load pocket created by the storm, Patton said, noting the grid operator could not price conditions consistent with the aftermath until early September. During that time, prices during peak conditions only averaged about $20/MWh, even though industrial load was still going unserved, he said.

“For about a week after Hurricane Laura, the prices in the area should have been fairly high but they were inefficiently low,” Patton said. The RTO eventually established a reserve procurement constraint Sept. 8, but Patton said that by then, the tightest conditions had already passed.

MISO President Clair Moeller said it took about two to three days for the RTO’s operators to manually readjust reserve zones to get more accurate pricing following the storm. He said MISO’s pricing must be more automated and dynamic in the future.