Baseload retirements, renewable growth in 2018 did not faze North american grid: NeRC

摘要

The North American bulk power system remains “highly reliable” in the face of baseload retirements, growing penetration of renewable resources and continually evolving cyber and physical threats, an official with the North American Electric Reliability Corp. said Wednesday. In fact, “by nearly every measure [for] reliability, 2018 was one of the most reliable years on record in the time we’ve been doing this report,” John Moura, NERC’s director of reliability assessment, said in a call with reporters after the release of the organization’s annual state of reliability report. For instance, frequency response performance — considered a key measure of reliability for the bulk power system as it allows the grid to arrest and stabilize frequency deviations — “improved significantly” in all four interconnections, Moura said. Further, the report said that misoperation rates for protection systems that prevent voltage and other reliability problems from propagating continued a “statistically significant downward and improving trend.” NERC’s annual reliability report looks at grid performance over the prior year and analyzes industrywide trends in an effort to inform electricity companies, regulators and policymakers of emerging reliability risks and shed light on whether mitigation activities for known challenges are leading to system improvements.