PJM Interconnection emergency procedures will expand to augment coordination with Generation and Transmission Owners and potentially leverage backup generation serving data centers and other large loads amid shrinking supply margins and increasingly extreme weather, it said on June 24.
The changes to PJM Manual 13 are aimed at maintaining reliability and were endorsed by stakeholders at the June 24 meeting of the Markets and Reliability Committee. They became effective immediately.
Capacity Advisory
A new Capacity Advisory adds an Emergency Procedure for times when projected grid operating conditions indicate an approaching capacity shortfall.
PJM capacity emergencies have taken place historically in periods of systemwide Hot or Cold Weather Alerts. PJM is now seeing forecasted or actual capacity deficits outside of extreme hot or cold periods and expects these instances to increase as demand growth outpaces the addition of new power resources and the percentage of intermittent generation resources on the grid continues to increase.
A Capacity Advisory provides advance notice to PJM Members of times when available generation is forecasted to approach the demand requirement, which is the amount of electricity supply required to serve demand for each zone in PJM. This provides advanced communication about system conditions for increased coordination.
Like a Cold or Hot Weather Alert and issued up to five days in advance, a Capacity Advisory anticipates PJM actions such as:
• Recalling or rescheduling of generation and/or transmission maintenance outages
• Notifying neighboring grids to prepare for decreased imports from PJM
• Alerting PJM Members to update their information about generator availability, fuel supply concerns, environmental constraints and more
Multiple regions have similar capacity procedures in place.
Emergency Use of Backup Generators
When system conditions are extreme, PJM may request a U.S. Department of Energy Order to allow data centers or other large loads to turn on backup generation as a last resort to avoid power outages for residential and other retail customers.
PJM, in coordination with Transmission Owners and other stakeholders, has developed a separate new Emergency Procedure containing detailed steps for coordination among PJM, Transmission Owners, Electric Distribution Companies and Load Serving Entities and their large load customers with backup generation.
The “Emergency Use of Backup Generators Warning” directs coordination among the entities mentioned above, including PJM, to determine amounts of power that may be served by backup generation in each transmission zone.
Subsequent issuance of an “Emergency Use of Backup Generator Action” requires large loads to be prepared to move to backup generation within 15 minutes. The Backup Generator Action would only be called after all available generation resources and load management were exhausted and prior to a Voltage Reduction Action and/or Manual Load Dump Action.
Some Emergency Procedures may be issued simultaneously, according to system conditions.
