New England power market stakeholders narrowing future grid study scope

New York — The New England Power Pool is seeking consensus on criteria for a major study to analyze energy market production costs, capacity market pricing, resource adequacy needs, ancillary services markets and anticipated transmission requirements, NEPOOL said Sept. 29.

The New England power industry is developing a "Future Grid Study," which is a collaborative effort among regional industry stakeholders, the New England states and ISO New England to further "assess and discuss future state of the regional power system in light of current state energy and environmental policies," according to a presentation about the scope and metrics given during a joint meeting of the NEPOOL Markets and Reliability committees.

Stakeholders are developing a power generation mix scenario for a given year in the future and then identifying the resources and operational/reliability needs associated with that fuel mix.

The study will also determine whether the existing market design is sufficient to provide the resources ISO-NE will need to continue reliably operating the system in the future state envisioned. If not, stakeholders will identify any market deficit that needs to be addressed to assure reliability, according to the presentation.

The joint NEPOOL meeting goals included reaching consensus on the study's scope and metrics, consensus on the criteria for a straw proposal and agreement on the key modeling assumptions.

The proposed metrics for evaluating energy market production costs include system-wide energy production, congestion costs by interface, average locational marginal prices, native New England carbon dioxide emissions and curtailment by resource.

For the capacity market, clearing prices, revenues and costs would be considered and ISO-NE has recommended hiring a consultant to do the modeling, according to the presentation. Stakeholders were asked if they agree the forward capacity market should be included in the scope and that a consultant should be hired.

With regard to resource adequacy, stakeholders are considering whether using a loss of load expectation of one day in 10 years is appropriate. For energy security, stakeholders are considering using metrics that include loss of load probability, loss of load hours and expected unserved energy during the winter and shoulder seasons.

Ramping, regulation and reserves ancillary market metrics would include simulated load following, ramping and curtailment performance, along with simulated interface and tie-line performance, simulated balancing performance and time-series data outputs on a granular time-scale for each type of assessed reserve.

Transmission stability could be addressed by evaluating the impact of high renewables penetration in the shoulder months and transmission expansion analysis could include the cost of transmission upgrades. Stakeholders were asked if a transmission assessment should be included and which metrics should be studied.

Straw proposal

Stakeholders are also developing modelling assumptions that can be used in a straw proposal. Data on the load side could include net energy for load, peak and off-peak demand, traditional load, electrification of heating and transport load, energy efficiency and behind-the-meter resources.

On the supply side, data under consideration includes system capacity, generation resource mix and system topology. The future resource mix could include natural gas, hydropower, nuclear power, onshore and offshore wind, solar PV and energy storage.

The ISO will gather written feedback submitted by Oct. 9 on the study's scope and metrics, proposed criteria for straw proposal selection and key straw proposal assumptions. The feedback will be posted.

Then at a November joint NEPOOL MC/MRC meeting stakeholders will review and respond the straw proposal and discus if any operational/reliability needs might be missed in the proposal and discuss possible additional scenarios that could cover those needs.