The Climate Report - Winter 2011
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission continued efforts to
connect wind and solar generation facilities to the interstate grid
by issuing a
Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Integration of Variable Energy
Resources.
FERC seeks comments by January 31, 2011 on three proposals. First,
FERC proposes to provide transmission customers with the option of
using more frequent transmission scheduling intervals within each
operating hour. Traditionally, resources are scheduled on an hourly
basis; the proposal would allow customers to adjust schedules at
15-minute intervals, enabling variable energy resources and
transmission providers to better manage variations from wind and
solar facilities. Second, FERC proposes to require interconnection
customers with wind-based and solar-based variable energy resources
to provide transmission providers with site-specific meteorological
data. Third, FERC proposes establishing a new generic rate schedule
through which transmission providers may recover the costs of
holding unloaded resources in reserve to respond to real-time
variations attributable to variable energy resources.
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