by Curtis Holland, WECC Staff Reliability Specialist

As the Bulk Electric System continues to be impacted by extreme weather events and environmental changes, many regulatory agencies are taking action to establish procedures to address these impacts.

The WECC Generator Operator Working Group (GOWG) is helping to address the impacts these procedures have on the Generator Operators (GOP) and Generator Owners (GO) in the Western Interconnection.

The GOWG is a WECC sub-committee and supports GOPs within the Western Interconnection in their combined efforts related to generation operation and provides guidance and coordination with other WECC committees on topics involving GOPs.

The Chair and Vice-Chair outlined planning for EOP-011-2 R7 requirements and led a discussion on the overview of Cold Weather Action Plans. Representatives of the group are participating with RC West on a  task force, to coordinate the response to EOP-011-2 and the other upcoming NERC Standard changes addressing enhanced reporting requirements which go into effect on April 1, 2023.

Work is also ongoing on assessing the impacts of the recommendations from the report on the February 2021 Cold Weather Outages in Texas and the South-Central United States.

As part of this work, GOWG has been working with WECC on content for the upcoming FERC Winter Readiness Technical Conference in April with WECC presenting at the February bi-monthly GOWG meeting on the format and direction of the conference.

GOWG is working with WECC on outreach to the Western Interconnection entities to identify additional membership. This will help us to be able to provide the greatest improvement for GOs and GOPs as we move forward into the fluid environment presented by the changing resource mix, regulatory changes, and the increasing frequency and severity of environmental changes.”