NERC Chief: ‘Longer, Deeper, Broader’ Weather Presents New Reliability Challenges
Educating Rate Regulators
Devin Hartman, energy and environmental policy director for R Street Institute, said NERC needs to help educate policymakers about the need for flexible natural gas units and services such as ramping. (See related story, EPSA Members Renew Call for Carbon Price; See Long ‘Bridge’ for Gas.)
State utility regulators “are really struggling with prudency decisions now. They’re looking at this and saying, ‘We don’t even understand you’re talking about ‘ramp,’” Hartman said.
“This has never been classically built into [integrated resource plan] considerations. And they’re really struggling to kind of operationalize it at that level. Increasingly, reliability cost and environmental performance are a function of regional portfolio conditions. And that means … you actually have to have enhanced information flows and better coordination.”
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Glass Half Empty
Asthana and Hartman expressed optimism that RTO stakeholder processes will develop the market designs needed to support efficiency and reliability.
