WMWG 1/28/22 - CIMView

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Table of Contents

Executive Summary

A long WMS meeting covered topics important to generators (NPRR1084- require outages for derates; NPRR1108- ERCOT to approve or deny all resource outages, possible RMR of resource owned transmission equipment), batteries (NPRR1100-Allow emergency microgridding, NPRR1096-battery duration for NonSpin and ECRS) and everyone connected to the grid (how do exceptional fuel costs affect mitigation, how much does a sudden disconnect of load swing the frequency) 

Agenda

Notes

    • NPRR1084 (Require outage reports within a half hour if over 2%) – ERCOT is okay with Centerpoint’s comments (loosening requirements for transmission outages).  ERCOT is waiting for market participants representing generators to file comments to engage on possible changes to generation reporting requirements.
    • Possible Reliability Must Run of resource owned transmission equipment. – ERCOT is considering requiring inclusion of resource owned transmission equipment in Notice of Suspension of Operation (forms (NSO – how a market participant notifies ERCOT that they plan to retire a resource so that ERCOT can study it to see if it is required for system stability and thus issue a Reliability Must Run -RMR- contract for the resource)  ERCOT admits that there is the possibility that they may not allow a resource to retire if the resource owned transmission equipment is required to keep the system secure; however, the current RMR contracts don’t envision this and would probably not reimburse the equipment owner in any way.  ERCOT agrees this is a problem and is open to hearing what the market participant community proposes.
    • Exceptional Fuel Costs – ERCOT presented some background on how exceptional fuel costs are filed and what they do (go into mitigated offer caps) and where they came from (NPRR847).  Luminant/Vistra stated that they are the company that has been filing all these exceptional fuel costs for the past two months and it is related to their dispute with their gas provider.  Interesting side note, the exceptional fuel costs are only for a portion of their gas purchase for the location(s?), but I believe the price applies to their entire mitigation curve.
    • NPRR1100 (Allow a resource to form a microgrid with a load when there is a transmission outage) – Two issues that Tesla (Eric Goff) have committed to iron out are how to make sure that any energy used by the battery to power the load are NOT treated as Wholesale Storage Load and how to make sure the NPRR language clearly reflects the situations in which market participants are allowed to form a microgrid.  Hopefully these will be cleared up by the next meeting and this can finally go to WMS.
  • NPRR1096(Battery Duration for NonSpin and ECRS) ERCOT is not okay with the two hour duration approved by ROS and will file comments changing it to four hour duration food NonSpin and two hour duration for ECRS.
  • NPRR1108(ERCOT shall approve or deny all outages) ERCOT presented on the methodology they will use to determine how many MWs of outages are allowed in the far future months.  Basically if you get your outage request in under that amount more than 45 days ahead of time, it will be approved.  If you don’t, you will have to wait until the date gets closer and they have more certainty and can free up some more MWs.  Once an outage is approved it will not be rescinded.  If you have comments on why this is not a good idea, you can talk to Fred Huang at shuang@ercot.com  
  • ERCOT presented a study where they determined (using October data) that the frequency swings by about 0.013Hz/100MW of sudden load movement.  Several market participants pointed out that the frequency shifts were probably greater in October than they would be in the summer, and that it might not be a linear effect, so maybe ERCOT should look more closely at sudden load shifts of >500MW rather than the predominantly 100-200MW data that they looked at.  ERCOT will think about it.

Discussed Issues