Reliability Measures: Capacity and Ancillary Services
When it comes to ensuring the reliability of the electric grid, two essential components play a crucial role: capacity markets and ancillary services. These mechanisms are vital in maintaining grid stability and reliability, especially during periods of high demand or unexpected events.
Capacity Market: Ensuring Future Readiness
The capacity market’s primary objective is to guarantee that there is enough generating capacity available to meet future electricity demand. In simple terms, it’s about having a backup plan in place. Generators are compensated for their commitment to have a specific amount of capacity available in the future.
In the PJM Interconnection, capacity auctions are held regularly. During these auctions, generators offer their capacity for a specific period, and the auction sets the capacity prices. This mechanism, often referred to as the Capacity Performance program, serves as an incentive for generators to provide reliable capacity and maintain higher levels of availability and operational readiness during periods of system stress when their power is most needed.
The Capacity Performance Program is just one piece of the broader capacity market operated by PJM. It’s a comprehensive approach that ensures the availability of sufficient capacity resources to meet future electricity demand. This proactive planning helps prevent potential blackouts and disruptions, ensuring a stable power supply.
Ancillary Services: Keeping the Grid in Check
Ancillary services are additional resources and services necessary for the reliable operation of the electric grid. Generators can participate by offering various ancillary services such as frequency regulation, spinning reserves, and voltage support. These services play a vital role in maintaining grid stability and reliability.
One of the key programs under the ancillary services market is the Synch Reserve Program. This program focuses on providing synchronous reserve capacity, also known as spinning reserves. Synchronous reserves are fast-responding generation resources capable of quickly increasing or decreasing their output to help match supply and demand and maintain system frequency within acceptable limits.
Participating generators in the Synch Reserve Program offer their resources to provide spinning reserves. These resources must be synchronized with the grid and available to respond rapidly in case of sudden changes in electricity demand or unexpected generator outages. This program is a critical component of PJM’s ancillary services market, which ensures grid reliability and stability by procuring and dispatching various services, including frequency regulation, voltage support, and other reserves, in addition to spinning reserves.
In conclusion, capacity markets and ancillary services are the unsung heroes of the electric grid, working behind the scenes to keep our lights on and our systems running smoothly. They exemplify the proactive and strategic approach taken by organizations like PJM to ensure grid reliability and resilience in the face of evolving energy challenges. These mechanisms play a pivotal role in safeguarding our power supply, even during the most challenging circumstances.
To read the full technical paper, click here.
