2009 Report - Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission

processes to expedite the licensing of cost effective transmission
resources needed to maintain reliability.
2. Regulators and policy makers must support the development of costeffective
transmission resources, including equitable cost allocation
guidelines for the delivery of both remotely located wind resources and
ancillary services (such as spinning reserve and frequency response) to
demand centers where such resources and/or services are deemed
necessary and beneficial. Coordinated effort is needed to better determine
appropriate calculations for measuring the availability of wind on peak.
3. Additional demand-side resources could be an effective option to preserve
system reliability over the next 10 years. In addition, they may facilitate the
integration of renewable and variable resources. Potential reliability
impacts of broad-scale use of demand response resources must be better
understood by industry and regulators. Better measurement and
verification techniques will be needed to measure and track actual
availability of demand response under various system conditions.
NERC has also identified seven emerging issues affecting risk
assessment: a) greenhouse gas reductions; b) fuel storage and transportation; c)
rising global demand for energy and equipment; d) increased adoption of
demand-side and distributed generation resources; e) replacing, upgrading and
adding transmission infrastructure for the 21st century, including enhanced cyber
security protections; f) water availability and use; and g) mercury emissions
regulations.
Peak demand in the United States is expected to increase by 127,614 MW
or an average of 1.7 percent per year for the next 10 years, while net capacity
resources are projected to increase by 47,610 MW or 5.2 percent (0.5 percent
annually). Capacity margins are expected to decline from 16.5 percent in the
summer of 2008 to 7.4 percent in 2017.
The NERC Reference Margin Level capacity margin level of 13 percent is
used to identify approximately when additional resources may be needed. The
existing capacity sufficiently meets the NERC Target Margin Level through 2015;
however, this includes the combination of a predominately summer peaking
system (NERC-US) and one that, with the exclusion of Ontario, is a winter
peaking system (NERC-Canada).
Electric Power Outlook for Pennsylvania 2008-2013 61