About This Metric
Planning Reserve Margins are a long-term resource adequacy indicator. Anticipated Reserve Margin (ARM) expresses the level of additional resource capacity that an area has above its peak summer (June–September) and winter (December–February) seasonal demand. It is calculated as the difference in anticipated resources and net internal demand divided by net internal demand and shown as a percentage. Each assessment area’s ARM is compared against its Reference Margin Level (RML)—the threshold margin established by the state, provincial authority, ISO/regional transmission organization (RTO), or other regulatory body to provide the level of resources needed to meet reliability criteria (e.g., maintain loss-of-load expectation below 1-day-in-10 years).
Metric Definition Document