The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) recently released its 2024 State of Reliability report, examining power system performance in calendar year 2023. The report evaluates reliability trends, identifies key findings and suggests next steps for compliance programs.
The 2024 report highlights four key findings:
- System response to more recent severe weather events confirms the overall resilience of the Bulk Power System
- Generation forced-outage rates continue to increase
- Performance shortfalls continue for inverter-based resources
- Texas interconnection reliability performance improved while facing new challenges
To address these system performance issues, NERC is taking the following actions:
- Increased focus on periods of extreme and abnormal weather conditions through inquiries and other event analyses, has produced recommendations for revisions to Reliability Standards, increasing cold weather alerts and additional data collection to monitor performance.
- EOP-011-2 was issued to address the effects of operating emergencies by ensuring each Transmission Operator (TOP), Balancing Authority (BA) and Generator Owner (GO) has developed plans to mitigate operating emergencies.
- Decreasing baseload coal generation reliability, in combination with increasing variable resource generation, will necessitate increased reserve margin requirements.
- As the power system becomes more reliant on energy-constrained and variable resources, traditional capacity-based planning methods and strategies might not identify energy shortfall related risks to reliable system operation. To address these concerns, NERC standards BAL-007-16 and BAL-008-17 have been prioritized for release in 2024.
- The Long-Term Reliability Assessment (LTRA), Summer Reliability Assessment and Winter Reliability Assessment continue to analyze various future scenarios and identify preventive measures.
- NERC and the industry will continue to develop enhanced approaches to assessing resource adequacy as the resource mix evolves. The NERC Reliability and Security Technical Committee (RSTC) created the Energy Reliability Assessment Working Group (ERAWG) to support adoption of technically sound approaches to energy assessments by system planners and operators.
- NERC issued a Level 2 Alert on inverter-based resource performance issues to collect data and provide specific recommendations to industry to reduce the systemic issues identified in multiple disturbance reports.
- FERC Order 901 directed NERC to develop new or modified reliability standards that address reliability gaps related to IBRs in data sharing, model validation, planning studies, operational studies, and performance requirements.
- FERC Order 2023 requires interconnection customers interconnecting an asynchronous generating facility to provide transmission providers with the models needed for accurate interconnection studies.
Next Steps
Utilities are encouraged to review the 2024 State of Reliability Report and associated reference documents in detail to identify the next steps which will impact your respective systems. TRC’s tested practitioners have the skills and experience to supplement your company’s planning and operations personnel as you examine, evaluate, plan and operate your power systems in light of the activities planned by NERC as described in the report. TRC has performed more than 600 transmission and distribution planning studies to analyze the power system interconnection impact of wind, solar, storage, combined-cycle gas, biomass fueled and hydro-electric generators. Additionally, TRC’s power systems studies group has the necessary expertise in transient analysis studies being demanded by the integration of inverter-based resources.
Resources:
NERC 2024 State of Reliability Report – Overview
2024 NERC State of Reliability Report – Technical Assessment
TRC Power System Studies Services
TRC Transmission Engineering Services
TRC NERC Compliance Services
Your Trusted Regulatory Advisor
TRC closely follows the national and state regulatory trends in all regions of North America. Our approach to power system engineering, planning, design, construction and commissioning testing, balances solutions that incorporate industry reliability risk trends, mandatory reliability standard requirements, regulatory guidance, compliance obligations, best practices, operational goals, and budgets. With expertise in power system engineering, planning and operations, TRC supports public utilities and private energy providers in their effort to stay ahead of the curve and to meet or exceed regulatory requirements as they evolve.
This regulatory update is provided as a service to TRC’s utility clients, helping to keep you informed of forward-looking issues that will impact your company’s electric system reliability risks along with related topics regarding regulatory developments to help you achieve your company’s business goals.
Dwayne Stradford
Dwayne Stradford serves as TRC’s NERC Compliance Director in the Power Division. He is leading and coordinating TRC’s NERC compliance support services with our various power utility clients. He is an accomplished, diverse energy professional with over 30 years of engineering experience regarding real-time transmission operations, short/long term transmission planning, NERC Reliability Compliance Standards (both NERC-CIP and NERC O&P), Transmission Reliability Assurance, utility scale renewables integration, FERC Regulatory/RTO policy, and Project Management. He spent the bulk of his career (close to two decades) working for AEP but has considerable working experience in the electric utility industry as a professional consultant. He has worked with utility clients on transmission and generation related projects in all three interconnections, so he has breadth of regional BES experience throughout the entire country. Please contact Dwayne Stradford for more information.