MRO and NERC
Richard Burt is Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Midwest Reliability Organization (MRO).
Mark Lauby is Senior Vice President and Chief Engineer, North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC).
The U.S. economy and nearly four hundred million North Americans depend on a reliable supply of electricity to support their businesses, communities, and quality of life. As our economy becomes more electrified, the changing resource mix, decarbonization of the grid, and increasingly extreme and unpredictable weather place an even greater emphasis on the need for a resilient and reliable bulk power system (BPS).
In this period of unprecedented change, how certain are we that energy will be available to serve load at any given time? One thing is certain — with the changing resource mix, we are a lot less sure than we once were, regardless of the time frame being assessed (seasonal, long-term, or operational).
The previous method for assessing resource adequacy may be obsolete. We need to rethink how we understand and quantify generating capacity, energy supply, and how load is served.
The need for a new energy assurance method is reinforced by observations from previous extreme hot and cold weather events, and forward-looking assessments of the grid. All of these point to energy assurance being the most significant reliability challenge the electric industry now faces. There are many facets of energy assurance, such as the changing resource mix, variable resources, behind-the-meter generation, transmission deliverability, and shrinking reserve margins.