Dive Brief:
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Thursday ordered mandatory reliability standards for inverter-based resources, or IBRs, to help ensure that wind, solar and battery storage do not threaten grid reliability.
FERC also ordered North American Reliability Corp. to develop a plan to register entities that own and operate IBRs and are approved. updated interconnection requirements for those resources.
At least a dozen times, groups of IBRs totaling 1,000 MW on average, went offline, according to Leigh Anne Faugst, an attorney with FERC’s Office of General Counsel. “These events demonstrate the challenges of planning and operating bulk-power systems caused by gaps in reliability standards specific to IBRs,” Faugst said during FERC’s monthly meeting.
Dive Insights:
FERC is moving to strengthen standards for IBRs as NERC estimates that roughly 860 GW of wind, solar and storage could come online over the next decade. These resources use inverters to convert the direct current electricity they produce into alternating current electricity that is used in the grid.
Synchronous generators, such as natural gas-fired power plants, often go through grid disturbances while IBRs must be programmed to do so, according to Faugst.
“It is very important that we ensure that not only synchronous generators operate reliably, but also that asynchronous, or in this case, inverter-based resources, also operate reliably,” said FERC Chairman Richard Glick.
Making sure the IBRs can get through the trouble requires reprogramming some equipment, which isn’t difficult, according to Glick.
NERC has been raising alarms about IBRs for years. In 2016, about 1,200 MW of solar generation in southern California was tripped offline during transmission line faults in a wildfire, according to a NERC report.
To help address the issue, FERC issued a proposed rule directing NERC to develop new or revised standards to eliminate four reliability gaps related to IBRs. .
The proposed changes relate to data sharing, model validation, planning and operational studies and performance requirements, such as the ability of IBRs to operate during system disturbances, it said. Faugust.
Separately, the commission gave NERC 90 days to submit a plan describing how it plans to identify and register owners and operators of IBRs connected to the bulk-power system that are not currently required to register with the organization, Faugst said.
Unregistered IBRs do not have to comply with mandatory reliability standards or respond to NERC alerts, he said.
IBRs can provide a variety of reliability benefits, including near-instant up and down, as Boris Voynika staff member in FERC’s Office of Electric Reliability.
“The flexibility and speed of IBR [are] especially useful when the grid experiences potential voltage collapse,” he said.
The American Clean Power Association is awaiting a review of FERC’s decisions before commenting.
