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RCA reviews progress on Railbelt electricity system management
Alan Bailey Petroleum News
During its public meeting on June 27 the Regulatory Commission of Alaska reviewed progress towards the formation of a Railbelt Reliability Council for the management of the Alaska Railbelt electrical system, and towards the implementation of a unified and enforceable set of reliability standards for the system.
These two electrical system initiatives come as part of moves to take a more unified approach to the management of the system. The system is owned and operated by six independent utilities. In addition to forming an RRC and a unified set of standards, the utilities are moving towards the formation of a transmission company to operate the entire electrical transmission grid, and the implementation of economic dispatch, involving the continuous use of the cheapest available power. The idea is to minimize the cost of electricity for consumers while maintaining an acceptable level of supply reliability.
RRC implementation The Alaska Railbelt Cooperative Transmission and Electric Co., a group of four of the utilities, commissioned GDS Associates Inc. to facilitate the formation of the RRC, an organization that would oversee how the entire electrical system is operated. The utilities have been working towards a memorandum of understanding for council implementation. In mid-May ARCTEC filed a report from GDS and a draft MOU. Since then the utilities have been working to agree on a final MOU, for signing and for RCA approval.
Mark Johnston, general manager of Municipal Light & Power, told the commissioners that the utilities had met in May and June to come to a consensus on the MOU and were close to agreement.
“I think we can see the finish line at this point,” Johnston said.
The draft MOU encapsulates several different business functions - there have been differing views over which of these functions belong in the RRC, and which belong in the transmission company or the utilities’ power pooling arrangements, Johnston said. The utilities had expected to bring a final MOU to the commission in July. However, although the utilities now anticipate developing a final draft in July, the MOU would not come to the commission until August, following approval by the individual utility boards.
Recommendations Seth Brown, a vice president with GDS, reviewed his company’s recommendations for the RRC and its associated MOU. The RRC should oversee the development, monitoring and oversight of reliability standards; open access to the transmission system; and the planning of expansions to the generation and transmission system. The governance board for the organization should have 10 directors and a staff of five full-time professionals, GDS has recommended. GDS has also recommended that, once the RCA approves a completed MOU, a committee should be assembled to coordinate the RRC formation.
In the context of Railbelt electrical integration there has been much discussion around the possibility of a system operator, akin to the RRC, overseeing economic dispatch across the entire Railbelt. GDS does not advise including economic dispatch as one of the RRC’s initial responsibilities. However, the company recommends that the RRC should conduct a study, to simulate the operation of economic dispatch across the Railbelt as a single load balancing area, to assess the costs and benefits of implementing economic dispatch across the entire system, Brown said.
RCA regulation The concept is that the RCA would regulate the RRC. Commissioner Antony Scott questioned how this regulation would be done, given that the RRC concept does not appear to have the characteristics of a utility and that there is no regulatory framework for dealing with this type of organization. Johnston said that it is necessary to have stakeholder input on how the regulation would be done, before presenting a proposal to the commission. Some regulatory changes may be needed, he said. Brown commented that the RCA has already ordered that the RRC will be a public utility, requiring certification by the commission. The organization could potentially be regulated through its tariff, he said.
There was also some discussion over why the RRC was being proposed as a single organization, given the variety of disparate functions for which the organization would be responsible. However, there seemed to be a consensus view that there should just be a single organization, given the relatively small scale of the Railbelt electrical system. Brown commented that, within the RRC, there would be different committees addressing the different functions of the organization.
Reliability standards Several utility executives talked about the development of a common set of electricity reliability standards for the Railbelt. There have been two sets of standards for different sectors of the system, with no mechanism for enforcing the standards. The utilities have been working on consolidating these standards and in April filed a set of unified standards with the RCA. Future enforcement would presumably be an RRC responsibility.
Ed Jenkin, director of power delivery for Matanuska Electric Association, said that in 2017 the group reviewing the standards had identified some items that needed to be added. Additions included a procedure for ensuring that the system has adequate power resources; standards for the interchange of power between utilities; procedures for transmission planning; and new standards for modeling the electrical system.
That then led to a reconciliation of the standards into a single set, said Larry Jorgensen from Homer Electric Association. Jorgensen commented that the reconciliation involved dealing with issues such as making the standards generic enough to be usable in more than one organization and allowing for factors such as Homer Electric’s need to be able to accommodate the dynamic flow of power through its system from the Bradley Lake hydroelectric facility in the southern Kenai Peninsula.
“Our intention is, as long as we keep an inclusive process, to keep these standards current for all groups … and maintain a unified standard,” Jorgensen said.
Cybersecurity standards The new and constantly changing world of cybersecurity was also discussed during the RCA meeting. Cybersecurity has become an essential component of electricity reliability standards, given the threats to electrical systems from malware attacks on the computer and communication systems that a modern electricity supply infrastructure depends on.
Jeff Myers, senior manager of information technology at Matanuska Electric Association, told the commission that the utilities had formed a cybersecurity working group and that, following a workshop with a consultant, the group had agreed on a framework for developing cybersecurity standards appropriate to the Railbelt. Chugach Electric Association has recently posted a request for proposal, for a consultant to help write the standards.
Paul Risse, senior vice president of production and engineering for Chugach Electric, commented that the development of cybersecurity standards for the Railbelt has become a very cooperative exercise that is moving forward quickly. The intent is to hire a consultant by the end of July, with a view to develop the standards through November, with a final draft going to utility managers by the end of the year. That would lead to the adoption of the standards in the first quarter of next year, Risse said.
- ALAN BAILEY
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