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PRINCETON, New Jersey, US, November 1, 2006
(Refocus Weekly)
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will
approve 83 new reliability standards for the U.S. power grid, which
should create mandatory and enforceable standards before next
summer.
In July, FERC named the North American Electric Reliability
Corporation (NERC) as the country's official Electric Reliability
Organization and NERC, in its new role, proposed 107 standards of
which FERC accepted 83.
The effort to increase reliability is a response to the power outage
of 2003, but NERC's first power assessment sees a long-term threat
from a lack of new generating capacity. Electricity demand in the
U.S. is expected to increase 19% over the next decade, but confirmed
power projects will increase generating capacity by only 6% and NERC
warns that dropping capacity margins could threaten power
reliability in many regions.
“Long-term electricity supply adequacy requires a broad and balanced
portfolio of generation and fuel types, transmission, demand
response, renewables and distributed generation,” the report notes.
“All supply-side and demand-side options need to be available.”
In recent years, several large projects to expand transmission
capacity have been proposed by entities across North America, with
the main objectives to access renewable resources, eliminate
regional transmission system congestion and promote fuel diversity.
“Although the typical attribute of these projects is that they are
intended to enhance the economic efficiency of the bulk power system
or to access renewables, they will also have a reliability benefit
by increasing operational flexibility.”
Large-scale transmission projects have the “potential to profoundly
change the operations and planning of the transmission system in
these areas” and development of projects has the potential to
“significantly impact overall electric system reliability in a
variety of ways,” the report notes. “To the extent the new
transmission expansion leads to integration of increased renewable
resources, operational and reserve requirement issues associated
with intermittent and energy limited resources discussed in the
renewable resources section will also need to be addressed to assure
continued system reliability.”
“Renewable energy and nuclear power are being pursued as an
alternative to the ever increasing consumption of fossil fuels in
North America, with several states and provinces in North America
having established standards requiring that a minimum percentage of
energy consumed be derived from renewable resources,” it continues.
At the federal level, the U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005 provides
subsidies for wind generation and encourages research into tidal and
other renewables.
“In the near term, renewable energy will largely be supplied by
existing hydroelectric facilities and the growing numbers of wind
generators entering the grid,” the report notes. Nearly 14,000 MW of
wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, hydro, wave/tidal, landfill gas
and municipal or biomass waste are projected to be added over the
next ten years throughout North America.
Currently, 21 states have adopted renewable portfolio standards for
the purchase of green power and wind “is expected to provide the
bulk of the energy required to meet requirements for additional
generation from renewable sources,” it explains. “Wind generation is
often located in remote areas, which requires new transmission
construction to deliver its energy to load (and) because wind and
some other renewable sources of electric power are intermittent in
nature, actual generating capacity available at times of peak demand
is less predictable than it is for capacity produced from more
traditional technologies.”
“Another characteristic of renewable sources is that typically the
actual electricity produced in relation to the available capacity is
relatively small,” it adds. “Although a large amount of capacity
based on maximum output may be planned, these resources will be
energy-limited and produce a relatively low level of MW-hours
compared to their maximum capacity.”
Intermittent renewables require that sufficient dispatchable
resources and transmission capacity be available to assure system
resource adequacy and operating security at all times, and one
strategy is to “discount the total installed capacity from renewable
sources to a level that reflects their expected operating capacity
at the time of highest system demand.” Renewables also have unique
characteristics that need to be analyzed to determine their ability
to operate within the capacity of local transmission facilities,
including reactive power capability, voltage regulation and
low-voltage ride-through capability.
“These characteristics have historically been problematic for wind
generation; however, as amounts of wind generation are increasing,
the manufacturers are improving the capabilities of the equipment
being installed,” the report adds. “In the past year, FERC has
adopted standard interconnection requirements that apply to new wind
generation capacity. These new requirements should help assure that
new renewable generation being added does not degrade system
reliability.”
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