The Annual Black Start Service Selection Analysis of ERCOT Grid

This paper evaluates ERCOT's existing annual Black Start service selection analysis and subsequently presents novel selection procedures. ERCOT procures Black Start resources annually through a competitive process. It selects and awards contracts to qualifying resources after completing a Black Start unit selection analysis, which selects a group of Black Start resources that meet a set of system selection criteria consisting of system reliability and minimum cost parameters. A current analysis methodology exists, but due to its inherent limitations, it is very labor intensive. Further analysis methodology development is performed to streamline the selection process, enable additional functions, reduce the manual intervention of personnel, and overall to improve the selection analysis. This paper analyzes the current Black Start automatic program analysis, and proposes new methodologies, programming improvements, and enhanced user ability.