The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has approved the Southwest Power Pool’s proposal for using a less expensive way of handling electric grid congestion, a plan called “topology optimization.” Its goal is reducing cost as well as the congestion in light of averaging $1.6 billion a year in congestion costs over the last three years.
Grid congestion is a condition where the electricity transmission or distribution network cannot carry all the power that generators want to deliver or consumers want to use without violating technical limits. This bottleneck occurs when power generation or consumer demand exceeds safe technical limits.
As Utility Dive reported, SPP’s plan will allow market participants to submit proposals for reconfigurations due to power plant outages or grid constraints, or the grid operator itself may offer a reconfiguration. SPP’s application at FERC explained it would analyze the potential reconfigurations to determine if the wholesale market as a whole will benefit from the reconfiguration, the grid operator said. SPP will also assess the reconfiguration’s effect on grid reliability before approving a change. In the past, SPP and other grid operators would respond to grid congestion by redispatching power plants, a procedure that can result in higher production and congestion costs, as SPP explained in its May 21 proposal to FERC.
However, with grid-enhancing technologies, grid operators can use topology reconfiguration to change power flows as a less expensive way to handle congestion, according to SPP, which controls Oklahoma and 13 other key states to North Dakota along with parts of three other states.
