Efficiently Managing Net Load Variability in High-Renewable Systems: Designing Ramping Products to Attract and Leverage Flexible Resources
Presented before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Docket No. AD21-10-000.
As the grid transforms from dispatchable thermal generation toward variable and uncertain wind and solar power, maintaining an adequate, balanced, secure system will require greater flexibility from resources and consumers. This will require many reforms to planning, operations, and market designs. Chief among the market design aims is to establish reserves for reliability and efficiently meeting net load variability and uncertainty. We refer to such reserves generally as “ramping reserves” without yet presupposing a specific product. The Independent System Operators (ISOs) and Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) are at varying stages of needing such a reserve; some have experimented with new ramping products while others have proposed leveraging ancillary services that were designed for other purposes. Our comments discuss how to systematically address this need, particularly as relevant for the future of New York and other regions pursuing deep decarbonization mandates.
