NERC Posted ERATF Industry Workshop Q&A Document

Summary:

The ERATF held an industry workshop on February 16, 2022, to discuss the key findings and recommendations from a technical paper written by the members of the ERATF. Panelists discussed energy assurance issues in the operations, operational planning, and planning time horizons. In addition, attendees were given the opportunity to provide comments for the development of a final Standard Authorization Request (SAR) for Reliability and Security Technical Committee (RSTC) consideration. Because of time constraints, some questions were unable to be addressed during the call, so the ERATF has provided a Q&A document to answer those questions. Please click the link to access the document.

Additional Discussion:

The Energy Reliability Assessment Task Force (ERATF) will assess risks associated with unassured energy supplies, including the timing and inconsistent output from variable renewable energy resources, fuel location, and volatility in forecasted load, which can result in insufficient amounts of energy on the system to serve electrical demand.

The ERATF serves the Reliability and Security Technical Committee (RSTC) in providing a formal process to analyze and collaborate with stakeholders to address the issues identified in the Ensuring Energy Adequacy with Energy-Constrained Resources white paper. This white paper identified energy availability concerns related to operations, operations planning, and mid- to long-term planning horizons.

Future considerations related to the reliability of energy are more complex and should consist of the use of utility and non-utility assets in different manners as compared to a historical view. In order to effectively accommodate this type of complexity, the industry needs to assess the current processes and expectations to ensure the basics are covered. The ERATF are implementing the following activities:

• Provide information to industry on the issues
• Support industry readiness and success on this topic
• Foster, coordinate, and facilitate activities of industry and RSTC sub-groups around the issues, risk, and potential mitigations or course corrections
• Gather industry feedback around recommended solutions that are actionable by either registered entities or industry groups (membership forums, trade associations, and technical committees, etc.)
• Evaluate options for industry outreach
• Develop suggested recommendations related to the issues
• Present work outcomes to the RSTC for awareness
• Determine appropriate path for recommendations to be considered and action taken
• For planning, operational planning, and operation's time horizons, identify the parameters for tools and methods that can identify the right mix of resources to ensure sufficient amounts of energy are available
  • to serve demand.
  • to meet ramping requirements at all times.
  • to ensure the required energy can be delivered from the source to the end user.

Associated Files:

• NERC_ERATF_Industry_Workshop_Q&A_Document