Andy MeyersInterchange Scheduling and Accounting

Subcommittee Chair

Discussion Item: Use of Emergency eTagsJanuary 2015

Salt Lake City, UT

2

• eTag Specification defines Emergency Tag Type as Followso Emergency Schedules, including reserve sharing, spinning

reserve, and supplemental reserve may be scheduled as Emergency Schedule Type. Another kind of emergency schedules is execution of an operating guide that Implements schedules in response to a loading problem. For example, an RTO based emergency re-dispatch that lasts longer than an hour involving multiple BAs. Typically, EMERGENCY schedules would not require reservations before being used where capacity benefit margin had been calculated to allow for this reserve sharing.

Emergency eTags

3

• NERC Glossary has the following defintionsoCapacity Emergency

A capacity emergency exists when a Balancing Authority Area’s operating capacity, plus firm purchases from other systems, to the extent available or limited by transfer capability, is inadequate to meet

its demand plus its regulating requirements.

o Emergency or BES Emergency Any abnormal system condition that requires automatic or immediate

manual action to prevent or limit the failure of transmission facilities or generation supply that could adversely affect the reliability of the Bulk

Electric System.

Emergency eTags

4

• EOP-011 (currently pending FERC approval)

o Alters the definition of Energy Emergency to include Balancing authority A condition when a Load-Serving Entity or Balancing

Authority has exhausted all other resource options and can no longer meet its expected Load obligations.

Emergency eTags

5

• Regional Criteria WECC-007o Purpose: To define the processing of Emergency Requests for

Interchange (RFI)o WR1. Each Balancing Authority, Transmission Service Provider,

and Purchasing-Selling Entity shall approve an Emergency RFI when each of the following conditions is met for a specific transaction.

1) The RFI author has designated the RFI transaction type as an Emergency RFI.

2) The content of the Emergency RFI is correct and meets all NERC, NAESB, and WECC requirements.

3) The Sink Balancing Authority has approved the RFI. 4) The duration of the RFI is two hours or less.

Emergency eTags

6

• WR2. Each Sink Balancing Authority shall verify that the Emergency condition exists based on any of the following actual or anticipated conditions:o Loss of generation, including potential violation of license requirements, regulations,

or statutes that apply under normal operating conditionso Loss of transmissiono Loss of resource due to transmission constrainto Inadequate reserves

Emergency eTags

7

• Count of emergency etags throughout the interconnection (2011-2014)

Emergency eTags

  2011 2012 2013 2014Jan-Mar 410 278 386 327Apr-Jun 444 475 522 494Jul-Sep 463 420 384 542Oct-Dec 316 327 414 363

Total 1633 1500 1706 1726

8

Discussion Questions: o There has been an increase in the use of

emergency etags since 2011. Is it a significant increase?

o If it is significant, is there reason to look for a root cause in the increase and use of emergency etags?

o Are there recommended changes to the WECC Regional criteria for the use of emergency eTags?

Emergency eTags

Questions?

Andy Meyers – Bonneville Power Administration (apmeyers@bpa.gov)