Distributed Energy Resources (DER) and Bulk Power System Reliability

The webinar co-presenters recently contributed to an article for a special DER issue of the IEEE Power & Energy magazine, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8495051. This article addressed Distributed Energy Resources (DER) and Bulk Power System (BPS) reliability considerations from several perspectives, including, inverter technology, impact of DER on BPS performance, wholesale markets development, and technical standards development. This earlier article reflects much of the power industry's focus to-date regarding DER in context of the BPS. So far, this focus has mostly been on identifying and mitigating DER impacts on upstream BPS's, as DER penetration level increases. This new webinar will focus on relatively newer industry activities that are now including consideration of DER's grid supportive capabilities. For this webinar, Rich will cover the main points in NERC's recently released Guide for Inverter Based Resource Performance. This relatively new guide was the product of a multi-stakeholder team that first evaluated the Blue Cut and Canyon Fire Events which triggered large scale (100's MW) inadvertent loss of inverter connected resources. Then, based on that learning, developed technical guidance for inverter connected resources to better support BPS operation. Charlie will look further over the horizon at planned technical guide development for DER Energy Storage resources. Charlie will outline some of the grid supportive capabilities of modern inverter-connected energy storage, e.g. inertial equivalent power modulation, and short term high fault current contribution. These technical points will be discussed in context of the plan to draft technical guidelines (IEEE P1547.9) that should allow for prudent implementation of these specific resource capabilities. The noted inverter-based storage resource capabilities have significant implications for BPS performance support, and are also relevant to achieving policy goals including RPS attainment.