Despite a great deal of time and effort invested in developing the rules and procedures that are now in place, a number of wide-reaching questions remain unresolved. Mark Graham, Hydro One’s Director of External Relations, highlights some of the key issues.
For example, Hydro One is reviewing whether there is room to adjust the current policy on how to plan outages on the distribution system that may affect generators. The policy now is that generators are out when their main supply is unavailable. Hydro One and the other distributors have the final say on planned outages on their systems.
By way of comparison, at the transmission level, Hydro One and the other transmitters are responsible for proposing scheduled outages to the IESO, which has final approval authority. The timing of outages can of course have significant business impacts for operating generators. At the provincial level, the IESO schedules outages while adhering to carefully developed rules designed to maintain grid reliability while protecting the competitive market for power – i.e. without unduly disadvantaging one player over another. To what extent should these types of rules and procedures be applied at the distribution level, given the need for grid companies to maintain their systems for the benefit of all customers?
Another difficult question is whether it’s desirable or even possible to make services for generators consistent with those offered to other types of customers. Fairness is one of the central objectives for utilities, but how is it possible to determine if a particular practice is being too accommodating to one class of customer at the expense of other classes?
Further, to what extent is it important that Hydro One’s policies and procedures for generation connection be consistent with those used by other distributors in Ontario? While consistency is conceptually appealing, there may be reasons for distinct approaches in certain areas where the grids are different. For example, Toronto Hydro’s grid is structured quite differently from those of most other distributors.
What measures and standards would it make sense to put in place with respect to work program throughput?
And do distributors in Ontario need to set up systems for central tracking and responsive mitigation of DG-related Power Quality (PQ) issues? Hydro One currently tracks DG-related PQ issues for its distribution system.
There are no answers to these questions yet, but they serve to demonstrate just how much of a journey lies ahead for those concerned with refining the system for connecting generators in Ontario.