During the April 5 Planning Committee meeting, stakeholders and PJM addressed the review of the processes of both the Regional Transmission Expansion Plan (RTEP) – at the regional and local levels – and the Transmission Expansion Advisory Committee (TEAC).
Aaron Berner, manager – Transmission Planning, discussed the stakeholder feedback.
PJM is compiling information and will return to the Planning Committee in May with suggestions to modify current processes. This will allow stakeholders to begin discussing how they and PJM might move forward with these suggestions.
Berner indicated that, to a certain extent, PJM and the stakeholders must be cognizant of recent filings at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission surrounding supplemental upgrades. Any process changes may need to be informed by any FERC rulings and issues they could raise.
Some stakeholders have had questions related to PJM’s philosophy of “Do No Harm” analysis and adding criteria to that. Berner said that PJM’s approach traditionally had emphasized reliability criteria to evaluate a project before moving forward. PJM disagrees that an economic test should be included, he said. The RTEP driver should be the metric for the evaluation for network upgrades and how to move forward.
Economic studies are part of the market efficiency tests, however, and all projects in the RTEP will be subsequently reviewed with economic criteria to ensure there are no issues that should identify the need for additional upgrades to the system.
PJM also is exploring changes to the Planning Community tool, so that stakeholders can make better use of it. This would include making clearer critical energy/electric infrastructure information (CEII) and limits on confidential requests, and making other open requests easier to track.
Berner said that PJM’s resilience road map might come into play, as PJM develops changes in criteria in relation to what upgrades are required and what might be amended as resilience discussions move forward. He said PJM is looking at resilience in a holistic manner; he expects that PJM will have a list of items for the Planning Committee to tackle as a group at the May meeting.
PJM and stakeholders will continue to discuss topics such as facility ratings and how those ratings are developed. Stakeholders heard a presentation from American Municipal Power detailing its questions and comments related to facility ratings.
Ken Seiler, executive director – System Planning and chair of the committee, pointed out that the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) requires PJM to operate to the more conservative ratings when there is a rating discrepancy between transmission owners and PJM.
He also said there are no current plans for PJM to formulate a problem statement/issue charge on this, although PJM will continue discussions with stakeholders on topics such as facility ratings and how those ratings are developed in compliance with the NERC standards.
PJM also provided two links for recorded video informational updates. Seiler said the videos give PJM an opportunity to present more information while streamlining the Planning Committee and TEAC. This gives PJM and stakeholders more actual meeting time to tackle increasingly complex issues. The current videos:
- Model Build Activity, including the 2018 series RTEP cases
- Reliability Compliance, including activities and issues at NERC, SERC and RFC
Other Committee Business
Endorsements
- Review of the Planning Committee Work Plan
- Revisions to Manual 14A: New Services Request Process (clarifying language)
- Draft charter for the Market Efficiency Process Enhancement Task Force
First Reads
- Updates to Manual 14A: New Services Request Process Attachment F and G., aligning the current data submission process in Queue Point
- Revisions proposed by the Relay Subcommittee’s cover-to-cover periodic review of Manual 7: Protection Standards
- Revisions to the existing Relay Testing and Maintenance Practice document and introduction of newly developed end-to-end testing document from the Relay Testing Subcommittee
- Proposed changes to the TO/TOP Matrix
Informational Updates
- Competitive Planning Process Cost Containment
- Update on FERC Order 807 concerning compliant configurations for multiple entities connecting behind a single point of interconnection
- Reactive transfer interface definition changes
- ComEd presented its Planning Criteria changes
- ComEd presented the retirement of the University Park North Remedial Action Scheme