Keeping the lights on
PNM’s power operations center shows complexities of grid reliability
Editor’s note: The Journal starts a two-part series on Senate Bill 165, the Local Choice Energy Act, which was introduced in the Legislature earlier this session.
The control room at Public Service Company of New Mexico’s power operations center in Albuquerque’s South Valley conjures images of a NASA command control center.
Massive, full-wall screens with live, real-time displays of New Mexico’s entire electric grid dominate the room, offering system operators a bird’s eye view of all transmission lines throughout the state. Specially trained and licensed technical staff monitor the screens in 12-hour shifts for immediate response to any issue that arises on the grid, such as a sudden rise or fall in voltage on a transmission line caused by, say, a spike in consumer electric demand, a fault in some power generation plant or a raccoon that’s messed with the wiring somewhere on the system.
Control-room computers monitor everything in real time, instantaneously reporting and pinpointing a problem for operators to take action, said Kelsey Martinez, the center’s manager of regional transmission organization and markets.
“We’re talking fractions of a second to immediately balance the load at all times,” Martinez told the Journal during a tour last week. “We’re here 24/7, 365 days a year. No one can leave until someone shows up to take their place.”
The tour offered a unique inside look at what could be considered the heart and soul of PNM operations to keep the lights on around the clock. It’s the first such media visit offered in at least a decade by PNM, which invited the Journal to demonstrate the complexities of coordinating power generation and distribution without interruption as the state and nation’s electric grid undergo a revolutionary transformation to replace fossil-fuel generation with renewable
energy like solar and wind.
It’s no coincidence that the tour coincides with a new effort in the New Mexico Legislature to allow local governments and tribes to take control of local electric generation in their communities away from PNM and the state’s two other private utilities, El Paso Electric and Southwestern Public Service. Supporters of the initiative, Senate Bill 165, want to empower local governments to set up “local choice energy” utilities, or LCEs, to independently speed the adoption of renewable energy in their communities faster than the privately run utilities are now.
But opponents say that could create grid reliability issues, complicating centralized efforts to make sure electricity flows where and when it’s needed at all times. That’s because nearly all independent utilities supplying electricity in New Mexico transmit power over PNM’s grid, which the company coordinates through its operations center.
As more intermittent renewables like solar and wind come online, central power coordination becomes more critical to dispatch backup energy in an instant when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow. And climate change is creating more challenges, such as extreme summer heat that spikes consumer demand for electricity to run air conditioners.
“Having a wide-area view — seeing the big picture — when we make instantaneous decisions about what resources to draw on and where to put them is critical,” Martinez said. “LCEs may have noble ideals and end goals to increase renewable generation. But they’re only looking at a small region — just a piece of the big puzzle — without the global view to coordinate grid reliability, which can complicate our power-balancing operations.”
Regional coordination
PNM’s power operations center has functioned since the 1980s to manage state-level electricity flow. But in 2021, it joined the Western Energy Imbalance Market, or EIM, which coordinates power flow among eight states to help balance out the ups and downs of electric supply on a regional basis as more renewable generation replaces fossil-fuel plants throughout the West.
PNM manages participation in the EIM for New Mexico. It’s now working with the other EIM members to combine their state systems into a fully integrated Regional Transmission Organization. That would allow them to go beyond today’s instantaneous decision-making on power flow among states to instead jointly plan ahead to balance regional electricity supply and demand.
EIM members hope to begin day-ahead planning by 2024, and, eventually, expand to months or years ahead as renewables are massively added to the grid.
LCE challenges
Local choice energy supporters say they can procure cheap and reliable renewable generation from third-party providers, or by building their own facilities, such as solar plants with backup battery storage. In the process, they can create self-sustaining microgrids to independently provide power when access to third-party energy supply is unavailable, such as during severe weather events, said Alysha Shaw, campaign director for Public Power New Mexico, which is promoting SB 165.
“There has never been a brownout or a blackout linked to a local choice provider in any state where this policy is law,” Shaw told the Journal. “Local choice providers offer safe and reliable electricity that is affordable and renewable.”
In any case, PNM and other New Mexico utilities would be providers of last resort in an emergency.
“The utilities in our state already provide distribution services to multiple entities safely and reliably, demonstrating that they are capable of providing these services to local choice providers, too,” Shaw said.
But that puts PNM on the hook with the National Electric Reliability Corp. if something goes wrong, since PNM is the local energy balancing authority that’s regulated by NERC.
“NERC has very high standards on reliability compliance and they will always come to us,” Martinez said. “They can impose fines of over $1 million per day, and LCEs won’t face that, because they can lean on us as the backstop. If they screw up and create problems for us, we’re on the hook.”
Allowing new LCEs to emerge around the state could create a patchwork of local utilities connected to PNM’s grid, making PNM’s energy balancing responsibilities more difficult, said PNM President and Chief Operations Officer Don Tarry.
“Energy reliability is the cornerstone,” Tarry recently told the Journal’s Editorial Board. “Managing the grid is critical and could become very difficult with this checkerboard approach.”