California ISO board approves changes to reduce outages this summer
The California Independent System Operator (ISO) approved some operational enhancements to prepare for the summer month to avoid potential long-term outages.
The policy changes are designed to strengthen compensation incentives for hourly imports to deliver during tight supply conditions; provide more accurate price signals reflective of tight supply conditions and dispatch of emergency demand response; establish an interim minimum state of charge requirement to ensure resource adequacy storage resources have sufficient energy available on the tightest supply days; ensure sufficient capacity is procured in advance of planned outages; and
streamline the grid interconnection process to expedite new supply.
“These enhancements were developed in close coordination with state agencies and stakeholders throughout California and the West,” ISO President and CEO Elliot Mainzer said. “The enhancements are designed to better equip our energy markets and power grid for extreme weather while complementing the efforts of California’s regulatory authorities and utilities to develop new clean energy resources. We are committed to strong collaboration with our many state and regional partners to achieve reliable system operations this summer and beyond.”
In addition, the California ISO anticipates close to 1,500 megawatts (MW) of new storage available for dispatch by this summer, bringing total capacity to nearly 2,000 MW. The ISO is upgrading capabilities to manage these new resources and enhancing rules to ensure that storage is sufficiently charged when providing ancillary services.
Further, the ISO board designated the Kingsburg Cogeneration Plant as a reliability must-run resource (RMR) to comply with the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and Western Electricity Coordinating Council’s (WECC) reliability standards. A recent supply analysis conducted by ISO shows that without the 34.5-MW plant, the ISO may be unable to maintain system-wide reliability, especially later in the evening when solar resources are no longer available but demand remains high.
These changes reflect the ISO’s efforts to get through the summer months with the least amount of burden to market participants.
