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RRC coordination of Railbelt electrical system moving ahead
Alan Bailey for Petroleum News
In a Jan. 30 meeting of the House Energy Committee Ed Jenkin, chief executive officer of the Railbelt Reliability Council and Lou Florence, chair of the organization's board, talked about the organization's objectives and its progress towards achieving those objectives. Established to improve the efficiency of the electrical system through unified oversight of the system, the RRC is tasked with developing, maintaining and mandating reliability standards for the Railbelt's high voltage electrical system; administering rules for open access to the transmission grid; and conducting Railbelt-wide integrated resource planning.
The organization was formed as a consequence of a state statute passed in 2020 requiring an electric reliability organization for the Railbelt's electricity generation and transmission system. In 2022 the Regulatory Commission of Alaska approved the RRC as the ERO for the Railbelt. The RRC is governed by a 15-member board of directors, with 13 members appointed to represent specific stakeholder classes including electric utilities, independent power producers and electricity consumers. Two non-voting members represent the Regulatory Commission of Alaska and the Office of the Attorney General's Regulatory Affairs and Public Advocacy Section.
Forming organization and moving forward Since the RCA approval, the RRC has been forming its organization and starting to move forward with the activities required to achieve its objectives. In particular, the organization has started developing a set of mandatory reliability standards for the Railbelt. Jenkin was appointed CEO in January of this year.
Jenkin told House Energy that the RRC has budgeted for a staff of four this year, a staffing size considerably smaller than originally envisaged but which he believes is sufficient. In addition, the organization has a technical advisory committee composed of technical experts, together with working groups composed of stakeholders in the electrical system, Jenkin said.
"So we have a very strong stakeholder emphasis, where the entities that are affected by the standards, the entities that are affected by the integrated resource plan, have input to the process," Jenkin told the committee.
Mandatory reliability standards In particular, work has been proceeding in developing mandatory reliability standards for the electrical system, with working group meetings being led by the technical advisory committee, including a technical advisory person with the appropriate expertise.
Four of the standards have now been filed with the RCA for its approval. And three additional standards are about to be presented to the RRC board, with a view to obtaining board approval to seek RCA approval of these standards. The RRC's goal at this point is to have 28 standards completed in 2025, including a large proportion of the operational standards, Jenkin told the committee.
Integrated resource planning Also the RRC is adding staff to conduct integrated resource planning and is negotiating with an independent technical expert who can support the committee that will be responsible for the plan development. The RRC hopes to complete an integrated resource plan in 2026, Jenkin said.
"We'll apply for a budget revision to increase costs to some degree this year, to facilitate the starting of the integrated resource plan this year," he said.
Florence commented that, with the upcoming work program, the RRC budget will likely peak in 2026 before reverting to a longer-term budget level.
Jenkin said that the RRC recovers its costs from the individual utilities, with the utilities recovering these costs through the rates that they charge their customers. However, the cost to individual customers is low -- Jenkin commented that the cost was less than one hundredth of the fuel cost in his recent Matanuska Electric Association bill.
The purpose of the RRC Jenkin talked about the purpose of the RRC. Essentially, the organization is tasked with developing an overall plan and associated reliability standards for a region where there are five independent electric utilities. A key factor in maintaining reliable electricity supplies is the maintenance of the 60 hertz alternating current frequency across the high-voltage generation and transmission system, he explained. That requires flexibility in the availability of generation capacity or backup battery power in response to fluctuations in electricity demand, or to accommodate some form of power supply outage.
This flexibility involves significant collaboration between the utilities, Jenkin said. In addition, through the direction of the Regulatory Commission of Alaska, two of the utilities, Chugach Electric Association and Matanuska Electric Association are working together to form a single load balancing area. The concept behind the integrated resource planning that the RRC is embarking on is the consolidation of planning across the entire region, trying to make the system more efficient and looking at larger projects that can be used by multiple entities.
"We still feel that we can coordinate those efforts and make a regional plan work for the Railbelt utilities as they continue to move forward," Jenkin said.
Three regions A key issue is that each load balancing area within the Railbelt has to have the capability to move the system back to that 60 hertz frequency requirement if there is some disturbance in the power generation or demand. But the Railbelt is split into three regions: the southern, central and northern regions. Those regions are connected by power transmission lines with relatively low power carrying capacities.
A consequence of this, together with the independence of the utilities, has been that each utility has built its own generation capacity, to ensure the maintenance of that 60 hertz frequency requirement. But the lack of transmission capacity between the regions is still evidenced, for example, by a notable number of load shedding events in Anchorage in the past summer, Jenkin said.
An upshot has been a strategy in which over the years each utility has built power generation to meet its own needs for adequate power reserves, with a resulting over capacity in power generation for the entire Railbelt system. On the other hand, the utilities are now jointly considering single generation resources, looking forward to an integrated resource plan that can perhaps result in larger facilities used by multiple entities, Jenkin said.
"If we'd regionally plan these types of generation improvements, those results could potentially result in long term lower costs," he said.
Coupled with this there is a need for upgrades to the transmission system to improve the connectivity between the three Railbelt regions.
In connection with the importance of regional planning for the electrical system there is a requirement for unified reliability standards across the system, so that all the utilities are working under the same standards for maintaining that 60 hertz frequency, Jenkin said. And a unified set of standards can help ensure reliable modeling of how the high-voltage electrical system operates and thus prevent system outages, he said.
--ALAN BAILEY
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