Recommendations made by NERC and FERC in a June report on restoring power after the loss of normal communications are guidelines and not likely to become binding, a NERC official said last week.

ReliabilityFirst Corp. Chair John Idzior, one of several experts who prepared the joint FERC-NERC study and report, told the MISO Reliability Subcommittee that utilities are too reliant on supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and energy management systems (EMS) when restoring the bulk power system from a total blackout. (See NERC: Despite Solid 2016, Grid Threats Remain.)

The joint report recommends that entities take five measures to restore power absent SCADA and EMS, which include:

• Improving backup communication measures;
• Planning for extra control room personnel on hand during a restoration without SCADA or EMS;
• Reviewing backup power resource provisions beyond normal battery backups;
• Using other power system analysis tools; and
• Training personnel for situations where SCADA and EMS are unavailable.

Idzior said that the recommendations will not be enforced and will likely not become future NERC reliability requirements.

“It’s currently guidance for entities to use as they see fit. There is no follow-up or tracking as a result of these recommendations,” Idzior told MISO stakeholders at an Aug. 3 Reliability Subcommittee meeting. “This is more an above-and-beyond. I don’t see a push for this being included in reliability standards.”

Hwikwon Ham of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission asked if any entity could enforce the recommendations. RTOs could incorporate the recommendations into their own restoration planning protocols, Idzior responded.

Idzior said the report’s findings will be presented to NERC’s Operating Committee at future meetings, but the entities that participated in the study will remain confidential.

MISO: Not Enough Solar to Add More Reserves

MISO staff expect the RTO will remain largely unaffected by a possible NERC industry recommendation to procure more operating reserves to cover the widespread loss of solar resources during faults on the power system.

The possible NERC recommendation stems from an August 2016 event, when 1,200 MW of Southern California solar generation was lost after the Blue Cut wildfire erroneously tripped inverters. (See CAISO Boosts Reserves After August Event Report.) RTOs have until Aug. 31 to respond to NERC’s request for solar inverter data and reserve information.

Steve Swan, MISO senior real-time operations engineer, said MISO will solicit data from the three solar farms representing about 170 MW capacity in the RTO’s footprint.

“MISO will be answering for the MISO balancing authority. We’re drafting the answer, and it’s basically going to say yes and no,” Swan said, referring to the fact that the RTO does cover the loss of solar through reserves, but only incidentally because of the relatively small amount of solar participating in the market.

“Eventually, we’ll get over 1,700 MW of solar, but that’s a ways down the road,” Swan said.

MISO is more interested in reviewing the responses from markets in the Western U.S., where solar participation is more prevalent, he said. “There will be some good information coming out of this, but right now, it’s not an issue to MISO.”

Dispatch Instruction Pilot Almost Ready

MISO is “very close” to implementing a pilot program that seeks to encourage generating units to more closely follow dispatch instructions, Swan said.

Under the program — which was conceived by MISO’s Independent Market Monitor, the RTO will send real-time alerts to generators that do not follow dispatch, followed by direct contact from MISO operators notifying unit operators of their non-responsiveness. Before rolling out the pilot, MISO staff will work with the Monitor to eliminate the chance for false positives, which could occur when the RTO binds a transmission constraint, Swan said.

Information collected from each notice will be conveyed to the Monitor to either confirm the lagging response or report system conditions that prevented efficient dispatch.

“The idea is we’ll be sending information back to the IMM in every instance,” Swan said.

Reliability Subcommittee Chair Tony Jankowski asked for MISO to provide a presentation on its current dispatch requirements at the next Steering Committee meeting in October. He also asked for an update on the RTO’s effort to tighten its tolerance bands on generators’ uninstructed deviations from dispatch orders. MISO in May said the project was in the software development phase after several months of delay. The Monitor has been recommending the project for more than five years. (See Monitor Again Criticizes MISO’s Uninstructed Deviation Rules.)

Northern Indiana Public Service Co.’s Bill SeDoris said his company is concerned about the move to tighten dispatch tolerance bands. The new standard is set to go live next spring, and generation owners need to know if the move will affect headroom, he added.

Swan said he would return to the RSC with updates.

MISO and PJM File JOA Pseudo-Tie Rules

MISO and PJM on Aug. 1 filed changes to their joint operating agreement (JOA) to better manage the RTOs’ pseudo-tied resources, MISO’s Kim Sperry said.

The filing (ER17-2220) aims to improve the “administration and coordination of pseudo-ties between MISO and PJM by incorporating into the JOA standard definitions, rules and responsibilities between the two RTOs,” MISO said. PJM submitted a simultaneous filing to adopt identical changes in its version of the JOA.

The standard rule set makes clear that pseudo-ties must obtain station service according to native balancing authority rules and follow the modeling rules of both the native and attaining balancing authority areas. The rules dictate that only pseudo-tied units — and not the RTOs — are responsible for compensating an attaining balancing authority for failure to deliver energy. Pseudo-tied resources also cannot be directed to serve load in the native balancing authority when the attaining balancing authority requires the unit’s output — unless they are needed to avoid exceeding NERC operating limits in the native balancing authority. (See MISO, PJM Float Pseudo-Tie Coordination Plan.)

Jankowski asked if the filing marked a first in a series of filings to improve MISO and PJM pseudo-tie coordination.

Sperry said that while the RTOs will continue working together into the fall on a separate filing to address the double-counting of pseudo-tie congestion, MISO does not envision another joint filing to amend the RTOs’ administration of pseudo-ties.

— Amanda Durish Cook