SPP’s Board of Directors has approved an updated assessment of the RTO’s 2025 transmission plan that corrects two minor errors and will re-evaluate a third project recently designated as a competitive upgrade.
Staff told the board during its Dec. 9 virtual meeting that two projects were inadvertently left off a list of approved construction permits: a new 345/115-kV transformer embedded in a larger Southwest Public Service project in West Texas, and a North Texas Electric Cooperative zonal planning criteria (ZPC) project that had an incorrect lead time when the assessment was drafted. (ZPC projects are not eligible for regional funding.)
The projects have been reviewed, verified for inclusion and recommended for notifications to construct (NTCs), staff said. The board agreed and approved the NTCs, along with the updated 2025 Integrated Transmission Plan.
The approval will add $48.1 million in costs to the ITP, amounting to a rounding error given its $8.6 billion price tag. The board approved the original plan in November after trimming several of its proposed 765-kV projects. SPP has said the portfolio’s regional benefit-to-cost ratios are between 12:1 and 18:1, the highest in the RTO’s planning history. (See SPP Board Approves 2025 ITP with 4 765-kV Projects.)
The board also approved staff’s recommendation to re-evaluate a 115-kV competitive upgrade out of the same ITP in the SPS service territory. Staff said SPS requested a re-termination of the project from a line tap to a substation about “2 miles down the road.”
Casey Cathey, vice president of engineering, also asked for a pause in the project’s request-for-proposals process, saying SPP has “worked through” some of the facilities through the RFP framework.
“This re-evaluation does not change the [FERC] Order 1000 classification. It doesn’t change the needs that are addressed, and it does not change the need date either,” Cathey said. “It is simply a termination refinement.”
He said SPS will submit updated cost estimates for the project’s noncompetitive portions. SPP designated portions of the project as competitive upgrades Dec. 3.
“It should be quite cost competitive compared to the original project, but we would like to go through that re-evaluation process,” Cathey said.
The Members Committee unanimously endorsed both recommendations, with two combined abstentions.
