ISO-NE staff participate in FERC forum on increasing efficiency through improved software

ISO New England was well represented at a recent technical conference convened by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to discuss opportunities for using improved software to increase market and planning efficiency on the bulk power system.

Two teams of ISO employees presented on work the ISO is doing to ensure the reliability of the grid of today and tomorrow.

Jinye Zhao, Stephen George, Steven Judd, and Ke Ma, along with two staffers from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), gave a presentation titled Probabilistic Energy Adequacy Assessment Under Extreme Weather Events. They emphasized the importance of understanding the operational risks associated with future extreme weather events. To prepare for this, ISO New England and EPRI created a probabilistic energy adequacy assessment framework that focuses on generating comprehensive extreme weather scenarios for the New England region and performing risk analyses across these scenarios. This framework allows for the analysis of related stressors under extreme events.

In another panel, Mingguo Hong, Xiaochuan Luo, Slava Maslennikov, and Tongxin Zheng delivered a presentation titled Transmission Outage Probability Estimation Based on Real-Time Weather Forecast. They addressed how extreme weather can impact power transmission. Their presentation shared study findings from an algorithm ISO New England developed to estimate the probability of transmission line outages in real time, given weather forecast variables such as wind and temperature. They also discussed software that could be implemented to tackle this issue.

The three-day conference also featured presentations from other industry experts, including PJM Interconnection, New York Independent System Operator, Southwest Power Pool, Midcontinent ISO, and California ISO.