Assessing the Bulk Power System's resource resilience to future extreme winter weather events

This paper examines the extent of resource adequacy and the North American Bulk Power System's resilience to extreme weather events. Observations and lessons learned from the 2014 polar vortex event provide valuable insight to NERC's assessment of the upcoming and future winter seasons. In order to gain a better understanding of how extreme weather events can impact reliability in future winter seasons, NERC conducted extreme weather scenarios based on the conditions observed during the 2014 polar vortex. The scenarios were performed for most impacted areas; Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), PJM Interconnection, SERC-East, and the Texas Reliability Entity -Electric Reliability Council of Texas (TRE-ERCOT). The findings from the scenario analysis show that existing resources can meet the extreme-case demand. However, Planning Reserve Margins (PRM) decrease significantly from the reference case. The results help provide additional perspective on how sensitive demand and generation are to extreme weather.