Operational Challenges in Our Bulk Power System

Deck: 

NARUC Annual Meeting

Fortnightly Magazine - January 2024
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NARUC held its Annual Meeting and Education Conference in California inNovember, closing out three years of the theme, "Connecting the Dots, Innovative/Disruptive Technology and Regulation." Here are excerpts from three panels that took place at the Annual Conference.

 

Commissioner Julie Fedorchak: Let's start talking about what the operational differences are between the new versus traditional generators on the system. What are the challenges that are being created?

John Bear: Think about the challenges of the portfolio today versus the portfolio of tomorrow. In the past, we'd figure out the most economical way to commit resources to meet load moving around. If that load moved around and the run changed, we had some other resources we can bring on to make sure everything was done reliably and efficiently.

We now have a very different portfolio. We've got a significant amount of weather-dependent resources, which are inexpensive on a marginal-cost basis. Then we take the other resources that we can turn on, can control, and balance.

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