Today’s LiveWire Spotlight examines the joint report issued by NERC and Texas RE describing two events outside Odessa, Texas, where external Faults tripped nearby renewable resources, but not their fossil-fueled counterparts. The investigators found the leading causes of capacity losses were loss of phase-lock-loop synchronism, inverter and/or feeder AC overvoltage trips, and momentary cessation – all known issues.
FERC will likely not act on the Joint NERC/Texas RE report’s recommendations until they deal with the fallout from last winter’s massive ice storm. However, it won’t be too long before they turn their attention to driving EMT modeling and high-speed SCADA adoption.