The Bonneville Power Administration took another step toward regionwide resource adequacy planning on June 1 by participating in the third data-sharing season of the Western Resource Adequacy Program.
WRAP is the first regional reliability planning and compliance program in the West. The program provides greater assurance of maintaining electrical reliability regionwide as all WRAP members must use the same resource planning methods, BPA noted.
The program is administered by the Western Power Pool, with the Southwest Power Pool contracted as the program operator.
Each summer and winter, WRAP participants share both real-time and multiday forward-looking energy resource and load data. This data-sharing enables the program to establish positive or negative sharing positions to determine which participants are resource adequate versus resource deficient in the short-term.
“WRAP's development is a true testament to the West's desire to come together to address resource adequacy concerns driven by a changing energy industry," said Steve Bellcoff, BPA's WRAP lead for Power Services. “WRAP offers regionwide coordination and visibility into each participant's generation operations but also requires each participant to be accountable for achieving resource adequacy – all of which greatly benefits BPA."
BPA has been involved in the development of WRAP since 2019. In 2022, BPA decided it would continue moving forward with WRAP participation, leading ultimately to binding operations, which the agency has elected to begin in winter 2027/2028. During binding operations, participants are subject to charges if capacity and other program requirements are not met.
Once binding operations begin, one of WRAP's most notable benefits will be its ability to leverage the diversity of all participants' loads and resources across the program's footprint, enabling members with surplus generating capacity or transmission to assist those with deficits.
Sharing seasons provide an additional safety net by ensuring participants have adequately planned to meet their forecast load plus an established planning reserve margin, BPA noted.
“This planning reserve margin is designed to ensure reliability is maintained even when loads significantly exceed the forecast expectation, such as when temperature and weather extremes hit the region," said Matt Hayes, BPA's Market Initiatives Program manager.
In preparation for sharing seasons, WRAP participants submit resource-planning data. Annually, participants submit Advanced Assessments.
The assessments look two-to-five years in advance and share historical load and generation data, feeding WRAP peak load forecasts and the qualifying capacity of a participant's available resources. Qualifying capacity is the number of megawatts that are eligible to be counted toward resource adequacy requirements under certain constraints.
Seven months before the start of the sharing season, BPA and other participants submit data during the Forward Showing Program. Through this data, a participant must show they have the resource capacity to meet predicted loads and have reserves in place to account for seasonal variability and extremes. The Forward Showing Program also requires participants to show they have the transmission capacity that enables their resources to meet forecast loads.
During binding operations in the future, the inability to meet forward-showing requirements could result in additional costs from acquiring generation or transmission capacity. Failure to plan for the Forward Showing Program requirements could lead to a WRAP participant incurring non-compliance charges.
This summer is BPA's third time participating in a sharing season during non-binding operations.
During the first sharing season in summer 2024, BPA manually submitted data such as short-term forecast data, resource generation capacity and system outage information.
Improvements followed during the winter 2024/2025 season with BPA beginning to submit that data automatically thanks to new tools built specifically to complete data submission.
For the summer 2025 sharing season, WRAP will use the “raised-hand" function, where a resource-deficient participant can send out a request for support to other members.
If a resource-surplus member chooses to provide support, the resource-deficient participant will pay for the energy via a market transaction. Responding to the raised hand remains voluntary during non-binding operations. However, after binding operations begin, WRAP could direct resource-surplus members to provide support, with failing to do so leading to a financial charge.
“We can now look at WRAP's system and see participants requesting support and respond to those requests," said Brian Wilcox, a program analyst for Generation Policy Management who supports BPA's Operations Program data submission and validation.
Bellcoff emphasized that WRAP is truly still in its developmental stages, as participants continue to plan and acquire resources to meet the program requirements and stand up the tools necessary to work within the program. Nevertheless, the summer sharing season is still a significant milestone for BPA.
“This is the first sharing season in which BPA has all elements in place to accurately submit data, monitor our resource sharing calculations and respond through the program," said Bellcoff. “Bulk Marketing staff led by Mark Simpson, Joel Jenk and Scott Newlon worked hard to make sure they know how to respond to WRAP requests for help and have all the right processes in place before the summer season started."
For BPA, WRAP has also been a significant factor in its decision to pursue participation in Markets+, Southwest Power Pool's day-ahead market. Markets+ requires its members to participate in WRAP, which means that all market participants will be planning their bulk electric systems using the same adequacy metrics.
“BPA found the inclusion of WRAP participation in Markets+ advantageous because it will combine a common long-term resource adequacy metric with short-term resource sufficiency obligations, ensuring adequate supply, reliability and fair compensation," said Nita Zimmerman, acting Vice President of Bulk Marketing. “In other words, clear and consistent resource adequacy guidelines ensure everyone does their part to support regional reliability."
With the sharing season continuing through Sept. 15, each day offers BPA the opportunity to refine, improve and integrate WRAP business processes into its daily operations. All WRAP participants will become binding members no later than the winter 2027/2028 season.
