September was a milestone month for the Western Resource Adequacy Program (WRAP), with new participants joining the program and a series of improvements adopted by the Western Power Pool Board of Directors, WRAP said on Oct. 6.
Public Service Company of Colorado and CORE Electric Cooperative officially joined the program as of September 15. In joining, they are committing to participate in WRAP’s first binding operations season, in Winter 2027-2028, with demonstration of adequacy in Spring of 2027.
To onboard the new participants, WRAP created a third subregion for the Rockies, in addition to the existing Northwest and Southwest subregions. The new subregion was one of the changes adopted by the Board at their quarterly meeting on September 30. A third new participant, Freeport-McMoRan, will be part of the Southwest subregion.
Kicking off the board meeting, Western Power Pool President and CEO Sarah Edmonds said, “Our job priority number one is to deliver the value of WRAP that we have been working on for over seven years with participants and stakeholders. We have been and will continue to be focused on building our technology infrastructure for readiness, building out all of the necessary policies and continue to staff appropriately to be able to deliver these services.”
The technology infrastructure refers to the launch of a new Forward Showing Assessment System (FSAS), which is the central hub for all data participants submit before each season. FSAS was implemented, tested, and went live in advance of the Forward Showing for Summer 2027 due at the end of October.
The policy changes took up most of the Board meeting agenda.
In addition to creating the Rockies subregion, changes adopted by the Board include the following, some of which will require approval from FERC to update the WRAP Tariff. One filing at FERC was made September 30 with another planned in coming weeks:
• The Board approved a proposal to create a second onboarding window in January in addition to the existing September participant effective date. The new window enables additional participants to join the program in January 2027, still ahead of the first binding season.
• The Board approved proposals from the Demand Response Qualifying Capacity Contribution (QCC) Task Force and the Qualifying Capacity Contribution for Long Duration Storage Resources Task Force, to update the methodologies used to calculate QCC values for those resources.
• The Board approved a proposal to calculate Capacity Critical Hours by subregion instead of for the whole WRAP footprint, to more accurately reflect the times of greatest need in each subregion.
• The Board approved a proposal to conform WRAP policies with new Reserve Sharing Group rules that significantly lower the amount of Contingency Reserve participants must carry. “That is an incredible savings, about 2.1 gigawatts, for the broader Western Interconnection, while not impacting reliability, and we’ll see those savings in the WRAP as well,” said Ryan Roy, WPP Chief Operating Officer.
• One challenge of creating the new Rockies subregion is that the deadline to set Planning Reserve Margins (PRMs) for the upcoming seasons has already passed. Working with the new Rockies participants and many of those expected to join on January 1, the WRAP team proposed a new timeline that would provide Rockies participants with the PRMs with enough notice as required by the Tariff. The Board approved this proposal and the new PRMs, conditioned on FERC approving the new timeline.
The Board also approved a proposal that creates a Deficiency Charge Deferral Mechanism through the WRAP Transition period, designed to help participants gradually enter the binding phase of the program.
Created with significant stakeholder input, the mechanism would allow participants who don’t meet their Forward Showing requirements to pay a percentage of the deficiency charge, as a cumulative measure in conjunction with existing transition discounts. If they meet their requirements in a future same season (Summer to the following Summer, for example), the remainder of the initial charge is waived.
“We are aiming to strike a balance that provides an incentive for participants to come into compliance, provides incentive to remain in the program as they resolve their deficiencies, and allows them to spend more money investing in resources and adding capacity, instead of paying penalties,” said Rebecca Sexton, WPP Chief Strategy Officer.
Board members praised WRAP’s stakeholder driven governance process, and the work of WRAP staff and involvement of participants, to drive these policy changes forward.
