California ISO approves power plant outage rule
The California ISO on Sept. 19 said that its board of governors have approved a rule enhancement that enables the grid operator’s systems to automatically model the potential loss of power plants, to improve overall market efficiency and readiness.
Currently, grid models only consider potential transmission outages but not power plants unexpectedly going offline, which means generator outages must be managed through manual intervention, California ISO said.
Generators have plans in place to automatically disconnect their units or shed load to prevent system overloads in the event of an unexpected transmission line outage, California ISO said.
“This rule, which requires approval from federal regulators as well, will mean that grid operators can rely on enhanced modeling to automatically monitor potential generator issues that could result in electrical flows exceeding operating standards,” California ISO said.
