MISO has drafted a joint transmission planning agreement with neighbor Associated Electric Cooperative Inc. (AECI) that is premised on how the two coordinate today.

The RTO and Springfield, Mo.-based AECI work together when they have generator interconnection requests at their seams. The two use an affected system study process to coordinate on system upgrades necessary for interconnecting generation.

At a June 3 Interconnection Process Working Group meeting, MISO’s Liang Qi said the agreement largely memorializes what the RTO and AECI already have been doing.

The agreement details MISO’s and AECI’s data exchange for studies, cost recovery for studies, requirements for facility construction agreements and how the two will honor relative queue positions in studies. It will provide for the analysis of generation interconnection as well as merchant HVDC transmission connection requests.

When one of the two encounters a generation project that strains the system, AECI or MISO would draft a description of the required network upgrade and provide planning-level cost estimates and an estimated construction timeline. The two decided that interconnection requests assigned an affected system upgrade would have only “limited operation” until the upgrades are in service.

Under the agreement, MISO would get 120 calendar days for its initial affected study and another 60 days to complete a restudy, if necessary. AECI, on the other hand, would work on 90-day limits for its two study phases with a 60-day restudy provision for late-stage withdrawals.

Qi said MISO will present the agreement for review in July to the Planning Advisory Committee. He said the RTO is targeting a September filing for FERC approval.

AECI, a member-owned nonprofit cooperative, is not FERC-jurisdictional. Its territory includes rural Missouri, northeast Oklahoma and southeast Iowa.