Advanced Energy Perspectives

Grid operators today are managing a changing portfolio mix while facing new system reliability challenges, such as extreme weather events occurring with greater frequency. As the clean energy transition accelerates, it’s vital that grid operators accurately understand how much they can count on different generating resources. They do so by evaluating the resource adequacy, or capacity value, of the resources available to determine how to meet total demand. But what happens when those methods of valuing capacity overlook certain outage risks? Some generating resources gain more reliability credit than they deserve. That is indeed happening with conventional power plants (coal, oil, and natural gas), which may be overvalued by as much as 20% under traditional methods. As new analysis commissioned by AEE shows, it’s time to get capacity right.

On September 17, 2020, FERC issued Order 2222, directing the grid operators under its jurisdiction to pave the way for aggregations of distributed energy resources (DERs) into wholesale markets. Recognizing that implementation of Order 2222 requires transmission and distribution system coordination and active engagement from state utility regulators as well, AEE and GridLab convened distribution utilities and AEE members for eight months to build consensus around key distribution system issues. The focus areas of the discussion included interconnection and aggregation review; communications, controls, and coordination; dual participation in both retail programs and wholesale markets; and investment recovery and cost causation. The result is a new understanding of the challenges in making DER participation in wholesale markets work, and ways that utilities, regulators, and industry can work together to overcome them.