Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Regional Assessments topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
NERC and WEC present new assessment details and shifting Northwest risk
Summary
NERC and the Western Electricity Coordinating Council told UTC attendees that demand growth (notably winter and large data-center-driven load) and generator retirements are changing risk profiles in the West; new subregional mapping and multi-metric criteria reveal rising near‑term concerns.
Representatives from NERC and the Western Electricity Coordinating Council described a layered set of assessments — long-term reliability assessments, probabilistic two-year assessments and seasonal analyses — and explained how the West’s mapping and metrics are evolving. Mark Olsen (NERC) said those assessments now use expanded metrics beyond the classic 1-day-in-10-years LOLE, including loss-of-load hours and expected unserved energy, to better characterize size and duration of shortfalls.
Katie Rogers (WEC) explained WEC’s move to more granular subregional boundaries for the Northwest and described results showing increasing demand growth and modeled loss-of-load hours concentrated in winter months. "For 2025, when we look at the planning reserve margins, specifically in the Northwest, you can see that in those later out years we do drop below that reference margin level," WEC said during the presentation. NERC emphasized that while the Northwest was in the "normal" risk band in last year’s published LTRA, preliminary results for the current cycle show more areas of elevated risk as demand and resource mix change.
Presenters stressed that the drivers include data-center and industrial load growth, retirements of dispatchable thermal resources, and delays or shortfalls in resource additions. They noted WEC and NERC changes to data collection and regional alignment aim to give states more precise, actionable information in the near term.
Provenance: topicintro SEG 726, topfinish SEG 1236.
