ATLANTA – The North American grid is undergoing a rapid transformation to its resource mix, adding increasing amounts of renewable generation — wind, solar, battery storage and hybrid plants. While these inverter-based resources present new opportunities in terms of grid control, they also introduce instability and potential risks to the system, as documented by NERC in multiple disturbance reports since 2016.
Over the past seven years, the ERO Enterprise has taken action to support the reliable integration of inverter-based resources to the grid, addressing emerging reliability risks related to inverter-based resources and focusing on the impacts of distributed energy resources from a transmission planning and system analysis perspective. NERC’s Inverter-Based Resource Performance Task Force (IRPTF) and System Planning Impacts of Distributed Energy Resources Working Group (SPIDERWG) have conducted workshops and other activities and produced a vast array of resources — including disturbance reports and reliability guidelines — to provide industry and stakeholders with information they need to reliably integrate these new technologies.
To better highlight the work being done surrounding these technological advancements and provide an easier way for industry to access the information, NERC has added two new resources to the Initiatives tab on NERC.com. The resources — Inverter-Based Resource Activities and Distributed Energy Resource Activities — are quick reference guides that consolidate the work that the ERO Enterprise has done regarding these two topics. These documents are regularly updated by the subject matter experts to reflect new additions.
The ERO Enterprise remains committed to identifying and working toward solutions to better manage the complex reliability problems facing industry during this time of unprecedented resource change.
