Executive Summary
Today’s Wholesale Market Working Group (WMWG) meeting focused on six main topics: NPRR1084 (Require outage reports within a half hour if over 2%), implementation of the new HCAP, a NERC presentation on the Uri outage, NPRR1100(ability to microgrid with nearby batteries if there is a transmission outage), NPRR1108 (ERCOT to not allow planned outages if they exceed the amount of outages that ERCOT thinks the system can handle), and how to encourage crypto-mining loads to be dispatchable. Of those, NPRR1084 and NPRR1108 have the most effect on future operations of generation resources.
Agenda
Notes
- NPRR1084 (Require outage reports within a half hour if over 2%) – Resource owners and ERCOT are still trying to come to an agreement on how resource owners can best get the outage information that ERCOT wants to ERCOT with the least additional cost. This will be discussed at WMWG next month.
- Implementation of the new $5000 HCAP – ERCOT (Dave Maggio) – The $5000 HCAP will have implications beyond the maximum price; namely value of lost load, ancillary service shortage penalty curves, power balance penalty curve, proxy energy offer curves. All will be lowered to $5000.
- NERC (Thomas Coleman) presented a report on the February event with a focus on gas and electric interdependencies (attached) – too long and dense to accurately summarize, but I have attached it to the email. It is worth the read.
- There was a loooooong discussion about NPRR1100 (create a microgrid with a nearby battery in the event of a transmission outage). They are still talking through these issues.
- There was another long discussion on NPRR1108 (ERCOT to not allow planned outages if they exceed the amount of outages that ERCOT thinks the system can handle). ERCOT presented the method they plan to use to determine the allowable MWs of outage in the future. The available outage capacity will be posted for the next 60 month rolling period and will be updated at the beginning of each season. It uses the long term load forecast and high unplanned outage and low renewable availability scenarios from the SARA. A cap is applied – 20% over the daily maximum of actual planned outages over the past three years. I have also attached this presentation, as it will be important in how you schedule outages in the future. There were concerns on how this might provide incentives for resources to overschedule outages. ERCOT will file comments on the NPRR (1108) and are looking for suggestions on their proposed methodology. ( to pengwei.du@ercot.com ) This will be discussed at the next WMWG
- ERCOT presented a summary of the ways loads are treated by ERCOT in a variety of special situations. If you are curious, I would suggest downloading that presentation as a reference. This helped inform the discussion regarding how to treat the crypto mining load that may be entering ERCOT soon.
- The implications of crypto mining load was discussed (if the load merely responds to price, conceivably ERCOT could have over 1 GW of load that instantly disappears whenever the price goes over $100/MWh, which would have deleterious effects on ERCOT stability). The main question is how to encourage said load to operate as a dispatchable load (with an offer, receiving basepoints) that ramped in a reasonable fashion. Some ideas were floated, this will be discussed more.
- WMWG stated that in future meetings it will discuss 1) effects of the variable NonSpin AS being procured by ERCOT, 2)a definition of what ERCOT means exactly when it says it will use “Conservative Operations”, 3) how much load will actually be reduced by voltage reduction, and how to include that in the price calculation, 4)what the weatherization fee structure should look like going forward.
