While NAESB and NERC struggle over the issue, North America steadily drifts toward unreliability.
Robert Blohm, a co-author of the NERC Joint Inadvertent Interchange Payback Taskforceʼs White Paper on pricing unscheduled power, has also contributed to NERCʼs current draft “Balancing Resources and Demand” frequency control standard.
Time is running out. It's been more than two years since the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) Joint Inadvertent Interchange Taskforce (JIITF), on which I served, issued its white paper[1] proposing how to price the unscheduled power (inadvertent interchange)1 flowing between NERC-certified balancing authorities (BAs). This was the first serious attempt ever to price the degree to which non-adherence to generation or load "schedules" helps or hurts keeping frequency within a reliable range of 60 Hz, which is the point where all the scheduled load exactly and instantly equals all the scheduled generation on an interconnected electric system.2