Over the next 10 years, the electric industry will face a number of significant emerging reliability issues, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation says in its 2012 Long-Term Reliability Assessment.
As the report puts it, “emerging reliability challenges will drive a transformational change for the industry that could potentially result in a dramatically different resource mix with reliance on natural gas and renewable generation, a need for enhanced modeling, a new risk and probabilistic framework built to address reliability challenges, and growing critical infrastructure and protection concerns — both physical and cyber.
“One of the most significant overarching findings of [the] report is a rapid change in resource mix in several areas across North America. While the key factors driving this evolutionary change vary by region, fuel price economics, environmental regulations, and renewable requirements are the most significant factors affecting the pace of change.
“Fundamentally, substantial modifications to the bulk power system require a great deal of time to design, site, permit, and ultimately construct. As projected in [the] report, a majority of new generation, as well as older generation expected to retire, will contribute to a significant resource shift. As resources change both in system characteristics and geography, the transmission system will be challenged to develop a more robust grid that is not only resilient to resource shifts, but also other more extreme conditions.
“Growth in flexible resources, such as demand response and quick?start natural gas power generators, and increased transmission plans to integrate renewable resources distant from load centers are encouraging trends. However, fundamental changes to planning and operating strategies must consider evolving risks such as increased dependency on natural gas, uncertainties of variable and renewable generation, and new vectors of penetration for emerging cyber and physical security threats. The confluence of these risks are critically interdependent and must be strategically managed, monitored, and mitigated in order to preserve the reliability of the BPS.”
Many of the observations are reminiscent of some of Ontario’s challenges writ large across the US and Canada, though sometimes for different reasons. Some key reliability findings:
• Notwithstanding the above cautions, resources will be sufficient to meet reliability targets in most areas. However, significant fossil-fired generator retirements are expected over the next five years. About 71 GW of fossil?fired generation is projected to retire by 2022, with over 90 percent retiring by 2017. (This would refer to the major contribution that coal makes to supply in the US, where natural gas is becoming cheaper than coal.) This may raise system stability issues over the next 3 – 4 years.
• There will be increased dependence on natural gas for electricity generation. Almost 100 GW of planned and ‘conceptual’ capacity is expected over the next 10 years, representing almost half of all new generation capacity.
• A significant generation retrofit effort is expected over the next 10 years – again in the US case, this would be largely in order for coal plants to comply with federal and state-level environmental regulations.
• Transmission growth is broadly needed to accommodate new and distant resources.
• Increases in demand-side management help offset future resource needs.