The most severe single contingency for a balancing authority area is defined as 850 MW. How much should a disturbance be reported in MW for DCS reporting?

In the context of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) standards, a disturbance reporting threshold needs to be set based on the magnitude of disturbances that can impact the reliability of the electric grid. When a balancing authority area has a defined most severe single contingency of 850 MW, this figure serves as a benchmark for determining what constitutes a significant disturbance warranting reporting.

The disturbance needs to be reported for Disturbance Control Standard (DCS) purposes, typically defined as a percentage of the most severe single contingency. In many cases, this percentage is 80% of the most severe single contingency threshold. Therefore, if you calculate 80% of 850 MW, the resulting figure comes out to 680 MW.

This means any disturbances reported should be at the 680 MW threshold, as this is the level that indicates a substantial loss of generation or significant event that could affect grid reliability. Thus, the answer given aligns with the standards set by NERC regarding disturbance reporting to ensure proper monitoring and response within the balancing authority areas.