“The concept of an energy day is at hand,” FERC Chairman Pat Wood told the annual meeting of the North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB) last Tuesday, charging the group with developing a standardized “day” to enable the natural gas and electric systems to work well together.

On an extremely cold day in New England last January, “it was of critical importance that the gas and electric industries work seamlessly together. But, we found out, in fact, that they did not,” Wood said in a video-taped speech to the meeting in Austin, TX. “They both kept the lights and heat on, but we discovered a number of things did not move smoothly.” One obstacle was the fact that “the gas day and the electric day are very different things.” Wood described a “cat and mouse game” played by generators to schedule gas supplies into their plants and then bid into the real-time and day-ahead electric markets.

Since natural gas-fired generation has grown to represent a significant portion of the electric market, the coordination of the two markets has become more important, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission pointed out. NAESB already has started scoping out the problem.

He commended the standards group, which started out 10 years ago as the Gas Industry Board (GISB), for developing the standards for coordinating the gas pipeline grid and their current marathon efforts on the electric side, acknowledging that stand-alone electric power standards for interconnection and seams must be completed first. NAESB committees are working with the regional transmission organizations on seams issues.

Another item the NAESB Wholesale Electric Quadrant currently is working on is sorting out with the National Electric Reliability Council (NERC) which items relate strictly to reliability and which have to do with commercial business practices. NERC will standardize the reliability requirements, and NAESB will deal with everything else. The group also is refining the OASIS electronic communications system and preparing a new version.

On the gas side, the Wholesale Gas Quadrant has established a pattern for web-based reports for tracking all physical and chemical properties of natural gas defined in pipeline tariffs. NAESB also has retail gas and electric quadrants which work on issues affecting the retail markets.

With a large amount of work to complete on the electric side, plus further development of gas quality standards and the coordination of the gas and electric markets, the voluntary standards-making organization is seeking new members. Membership and participation in standards development allows individual companies to have a part in formulating how industry operations will be conducted.

NAESB’s goal is to reduce transaction costs through efficient operation, according to Rae McQuade, NAESB executive director. NAESB currently has 329 members, down slightly from last year.

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