Stakeholders told MISO they need a better explanation of the every-other-day capacity advisories issued for MISO South, which have become customary since the beginning of summer.
Jim Dauphinais, an attorney for multiple industrial end-use customers, commented that there’s been an “extraordinary” number of capacity advisories in MISO South in recent months.
“We don’t know if it’s a change in MISO practices or a change in resource availability,” Dauphinais said at a Resource Adequacy Subcommittee meeting Oct. 1. He asked MISO staff to speak on its raft of declarations in the South.
“It makes people ambivalent. … I don’t know if that’s too strong of a word. The situational awareness goes down because they are happening so frequently,” Dauphinais said.
Mississippi Public Service Commission consultant Bill Booth agreed that the regularity of the alerts has made them easier to ignore.
“An alert is useful if there are instructions following it. We’re not sure what to do with these,” Booth said.
MISO Resource Adequacy Director Neil Shah said one of the drivers behind the advisories is a larger number of outages in the South. Beyond that, he said his colleagues would be better equipped to speak on the continual advisories at an upcoming stakeholder meeting.
The RTO has extended its steady stream of capacity advisories from summer into September, issuing 15 capacity advisories over the month, with a few including MISO Midwest.
At MISO’s quarterly Board Week in September, Executive Director of System Operations Jessica Lucas said the RTO is trying to indicate periods of elevated reliability risk in the South so that no one is caught off guard by potential emergency orders. (See MISO Recounts Tough Summer; Monitor Praises Lack of Emergencies and MISO on Track to Wrap Summer with 122-GW Peak, Addresses Frequent South Advisories.)
Stakeholders have speculated that advisories are the direct outcome of the RTO’s load-shed orders in Greater New Orleans during Memorial Day weekend. (See MISO Says Public Communication Needs Work After NOLA Load Shed.)
Public Utility Commission of Texas economist Werner Roth told Shah to expect similar questioning from the Entergy Regional State Committee at its Oct. 7 meeting.
“We’re going to expect some more clarity around this. We are curious to get more of a dive in this,” Roth said.
Pelican Power’s Tia Elliott said she’s been fielding questions about the advisories.
“Is MISO being more conservative because of what happened in May? More information from MISO would be useful,” she said.
WEC Energy Group’s Chris Plante also said his coworkers have been approaching him for answers.
“Was there a change to operational procedures? And if there was, would that potentially extend to MISO North? Those are questions I don’t have answers for,” Plante said.
Minnesota Power’s Tom Butz asked whether the frequent advisories would affect the resource adequacy hours MISO uses in its availability-based accreditation or have an influence on how it plans to divvy up the planning resource margin requirement among its load-serving entities. (See Stakeholders Question MISO Plan to Reassign LSEs’ MW Duties Based on Risky Periods.)
“All fair comments and questions. I hear you guys loud and clear,” Shah said. He promised to take the concerns to fellow staff members and have them address the advisories publicly.
