Today’s LiveWire Spotlight examines the latest seasonal assessment issued by NERC’s Reliability Assessment Subcommittee (RAS) addressing BES reliability and adequacy. RAS has confirmed that twenty of the twenty-one North American assessment areas have adequate resources (i.e.; Anticipated Reserve Margin) to meet the peak projected summer demand. ERCOT is the exception, although the addition of 1.9 GW of resource capacity (mostly solar and wind) has lowered the gap by 84% from 2019.
The extraordinary global health and political crises are likely to continue to take their toll on the Registered Entity base during the summer of 2020. ERCOT, SPP, and WECC are most at risk, but every entity must be prepared to deal with the ultra-enhanced reliability risks.