A Reliable, Clean Energy Future
James Robb oversees NERC’s mission of assuring the reliability and security of the North American bulk power system. As president and CEO, he directs key programs affecting more than one thousand four hundred bulk power system owners, operators, and users, including mandatory NERC Reliability Standards, compliance monitoring, enforcement, situational awareness, event and risk analysis, reliability assessments and forecasting, cyber and physical security, and government relations. He also oversees operations of Regional Entities that support reliability mission across North America.
Mark Lauby is senior vice president and chief engineer at NERC. He joined NERC in January 2007 and has held a number of positions, including vice president and director of Standards and vice president and director of Reliability Assessments and Performance Analysis. Prior to joining NERC, he worked for EPRI for twenty years, holding a number of senior positions.
The increasing electrification of our national economy coupled with a near simultaneous transition to a decarbonized grid continues to present challenges for industry as it works to assure resource adequacy and a reliable bulk power system (BPS).
These challenges, when combined with an increased number of extreme weather events as documented in NERC's 2023 State of Reliability Report, require a rethink in the way in which generating capacity, energy supply, and load-serving needs are understood.
NERC's 2022 Long-Term Reliability Assessment, which provides a ten-year outlook on resource adequacy, identified a substantial change in the energy portfolio. Wind, solar, and natural-gas-fired generation are the overwhelmingly predominant generation types in the planning horizon in addition to the BPS. A summary of generation resources in the interconnection planning queues is shown in the Figure.
See Figure One.
This resource mix transformation requires a change in our approach to resource adequacy. Historically, analysis of the resource adequacy of the BPS focused on capacity over peak time periods.