To recommend approval of NPRR571 as recommended by PRS in the 11/21/13 PRS Report and as amended by the 12/3/13 TIEC comments with a proposed effective date of June 1, 2014.
This Nodal Protocol Revision Request (NPRR) establishes rules for participation in Emergency Response Service (ERS) by Loads with Demand response capability that is highly sensitive to weather conditions. It introduces appropriate calculations for qualification, baseline definition and monitoring and verification, availability, performance, and payment of Loads driven by weather, including especially residential Loads — and provides for their participation in ERS only during ERS Time Periods that correlate to peak weather conditions (e.g., Business Hours 2 and Business Hours 3 during the June-September ERS Standard Contract Term).
Qualified Scheduling Entities (QSEs) representing weather-sensitive ERS Loads would be compensated for those Resources based solely on their performance during deployment events and during unannounced testing.
Because ERCOT expects this category of Resource to consist primarily of aggregations of small customer Loads, which may be subject to significant growth and/or high levels of churn, QSEs representing weather-sensitive ERS Loads would be allowed to adjust the population of their aggregations on a monthly basis during an ERS Standard Contract Term under a specified process.
The NPRR also establishes a structure of payment reductions for QSEs to protect against over-stated offers or projected growth in either aggregation population or average site performance.
Weather-sensitive ERS Loads would be subject to a maximum of eight deployment events of up to three hours per event during an ERS Contract Period. In addition, weather-sensitive ERS Loads are subject to up to eight ERCOT-administered unannounced tests per ERS Standard Contract Term of up to three hours, which do not reduce the ERS Load’s event time obligation.
Reason:
ERS is procured for four-month ERS Standard Contract Terms and requires participating ERS Loads to meet availability and performance requirements for a fixed capacity obligation for the entire term. This has limited the ability of weather-sensitive ERS Loads to offer their full potential and/or to meet event or test performance requirements during periods of mild weather. Consequently, ERS in its five-year history has attracted very little participation from weather-sensitive Loads.
Peak Demand in the ERCOT Region, both in summer and winter, is driven by weather-sensitive Load, primarily residential and small commercial air conditioning in the summer and electric heat in winter. This NPRR is expected to make ERS more accessible for HVAC-driven Loads, in turn enhancing grid reliability by attracting more emergency Demand response capacity to ERS.
This NPRR only anticipates the participation of weather sensitive Loads in the summer (June through September) ERS Standard Contract Term, and only during Business Hours 2 and 3, the summer seasonal period of peak Demand, until or unless additional changes to the Protocols are adopted to solicit Load participation for additional times such as weekend afternoon hours in the summer, or separately specified winter ERS Standard Contract Term and ERS Time Periods as appropriate.