Regional Resource Adequacy and Grid Reliability (2020 Transition)

Book 2 - Issue Papers
Entire 2020 DOE Transition book As of October 2020

Resource adequacy and grid reliability remain central topics of relevancy for the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), especially given recent supply/demand issues precipitated by a series of hot weather events in the Western United States over the summer of 2020. These topics are all the more relevant given projected closures of certain generating facilities and reliance on renewable energy sources.

Background

During the summer of 2020, several severe hot weather events caused Western United States electricity demand to nearly exceed available generating capacity in certain hours. The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) joins other regional utilities through the Northwest Power Pool on an initiative to develop a program to ensure that the region maintains energy supply and demand parity in a very high percentage of likely conditions.

This is an issue of emerging concern in the region and to the entire Western Interconnection. With coal plants retiring faster than previously anticipated, the Northwest faces a potential shortfall of several gigawatts of capacity to serve load. At the same time, the region is building new renewable, carbon-free generating resources. Such renewables can produce significant energy under the proper conditions, but they do not share the same long-term capacity attributes of the resources they are replacing (e.g., coal plants) to ensure resource adequacy.

The Northwest Power Pool initiative proposes a regional program structure to define how much dispatchable capacity is needed and to allocate accountability for carrying that capacity. The program will also look at deliverability and for ways to take advantage of regional diversity to help participants meet obligations and be as efficient as possible with existing resources.

Issue(s)

Key issues for BPA and its customers include:

• Regulatory, legal, and jurisdictional concerns related to the unique status of BPA and public power.
• Valuation of and compensation for BPA’s hydropower generation.
• Inclusion of transmission deliverability in the resource adequacy evaluation and fair compensation for the use of BPA’s transmission system.
• Interaction with short-term energy markets, such as the Western Energy Imbalance Market.

Status

BPA has been participating in the current Northwest Power Pool initiative since the work began in the fall of 2019. The multi-phase initiative involves information gathering, design, and implementation. It is currently in the second phase, and participants are developing detailed design criteria.

See also

• Bonneville Power Administration