Dive Brief:
- A Southwest Power Pool working group is studying development of a reliability standard based on expected unserved energy, or EUE, and which includes varied requirements for at least two seasons, according Will McAdams, chair of SPP’s Resource and Energy Adequacy Leadership team, or REAL.
- McAdams, a regulator on the Public Utility Commission of Texas, said at its Thursday open meeting that learnings from SPP’s work could inform similar efforts underway at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.
- The REAL team will also consider universal accreditation of both renewables and thermal resources. “That is being hotly debated” right now, McAdams said, after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in March rejected the SPP approach amid concerns it may be discriminatory.
Dive Insight:
FERC’s March decision was made on procedural grounds but Commissioner Allison Clements echoed the concerns of renewables advocates and said SPP’s accrediting proposal was discriminatory.
“It would cut the capacity accreditation of wind and solar resources based on historic performance, but failed to account for non-performance of other resource types,” she wrote in her concurrence.
The SPP Real team is now evaluating the decision, McAdams said. “And then we will also be looking at the capacity obligations assigned as a result of the implied reserve margins that will come out of the EUE study.”
The study has been approved and launched, with results expected back in September, McAdams said.
“SPP is looking at a reliability standard on at least a two-season basis. ... [It] will consider reliability standards for summer peak as well as winter peak, because the performance profile of resources between the two seasons and the load profile is so distinct,” McAdams said.
SPP’s REAL team was brought together to assess the grid operator’s “current resource adequacy construct and anticipated challenges” resulting from resource mix changes, extreme weather impacts and changing consumer behaviors, according to organizing documents.
Scope of the group includes “flexibility to enhance existing tools to achieve a reliability standard to prevent shortfalls or scarcity events,” according to minutes from the group’s April 20 meeting.
The topics discussed by the REAL team are “very similar” to the PUCT’s own efforts, McAdams said. “We'll be bringing back more information on that over the coming months,” he said.
After Winter Storm Uri in 2021 Texas lawmakers directed the PUCT to develop a reliability standard to improve performance of the ERCOT grid. Last month, commission staff said the regulators should consider multiple metrics in the development of the standard including EUE, a traditional loss of load expectation, and others.
