FERC agrees: Renewables cause congestion on ISO-NE grid
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has approved an effort to help manage congestion on the Independent System Operator – New England (ISO-NE) grid — by ruling on the renewables allowed on the system.
ISO-NE’s request said that because renewable output is variable, the integration of renewable resources in remote areas of their transmission system has caused increased congestion.
“Intermittent renewable resources such as wind are still a small part of the New England generating fleet, but they are increasing. Most wind plants are installed in remote areas of the region with transmission lines that were designed to deliver generation from relatively small, remote hydro generators, not to carry large amounts of generation,” ISO-NE spokesperson Marcia Blomberg told FierceEnergy. “As a result, system operators have maintained reliability by, at times, manually curtailing the output in some local areas of wind and other plants that might otherwise overload these smaller transmission lines. The ‘do not exceed’ system, with automated signals, is expected to continue to maintain reliability while maximizing utilization of the limited transmission lines and improving the ability to use low-cost renewable resources, thereby improving economic efficiency.”
