NYISO Issues Comprehensive Reliability Plan
The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) recently published its Comprehensive Reliability Plan (CRP). Although the CRP indicates that the NY State bulk power system is expected to adequately meet demand through 2030, there is less room for error than in the past.
In other words, any deviation from planned projects to boost reliability and/or supply, or any unexpected supply deactivation, or any material worsening of forecasted weather patterns, could put a damper on the ability of the NYISO to meet its reliability goals.
NYISO CRP Snapshot
The phrase “tread carefully” is a good one-word snapshot of the CRP. As I mentioned above, there is less room for error compared to the recent past, and in fact, the report notes that “reliability margins are thinning to concerning levels beginning in 2023.” Because of this inherent but growing forecasting risk, any resource planning efforts must be analyzed and tracked more carefully than before.
When it comes to minimizing this forecasting risk, the CRP emphasizes developing new generation resources, transmission infrastructure, and energy efficiency tactics.
It also purports to develop longer-running dispatchable emission-free sources to mitigate the issue of energy storage assets being able to store energy for only limited amounts of time. This will be no small task, and in fact this seems like the biggest reach in the report – it predicts the need to develop 32,000 MW of new dispatchable emission-free sources, which is 6,000 MW more than the total amount of fossil-fueled power plants currently in service across the New York grid!
Having the grid’s reliability hinge on such an aggressive tactic seems beyond risky to me. While I’m sure it’s possible to develop more generation capacity in the next 10 years than what currently exists, this is not a safe bet by any means. I would rather the CRP come up with a series of smaller, more incremental recommendations to achieve the reliability target. In any case, it will be interesting to see where the NYISO CRP recommendations stand a few years from now, that’s for sure.
