PJM Members: Capacity Performance Penalties May Hurt Dispatch Discipline
Members warned PJM officials last week that the way the RTO plans to calculate Capacity Performance could lead generators to ignore dispatch instructions to avoid penalties.
PJM expects generators’ output to match their Capacity Performance obligations even at the beginning of a no-notice emergency, leaving no allowance for ramping. That could lead generators that are not producing at their full CP commitment when the emergency is called to exceed their obligation later in the hour to avoid or minimize penalties, stakeholders said.
The discussion came during an Operating Committee briefing by PJM officials on the operating impacts of the rule changes and how they would assess penalties under several scenarios.
“We could have a lot of people not following PJM dispatch on no-notice events just to avoid these penalties,” said Ed Tatum of Old Dominion Electric Cooperative.
