By Amanda Durish Cook

CARMEL, Ind. — MISO spent much of 2019 preparing for a massive shift to renewable resources — and 2020 will herald much the same, RTO executives say.

“The next leg of fleet evolution is going to take us to a much different place,” MISO CEO John Bear said at the beginning of 2019.

Bear said the foreseeable future would be characterized by what MISO dubs the “3Ds”: demarginalization, decentralization and digitization.

The three trends represent significant growth in renewables and natural gas generation; a shift in power production away from large centralized plants to distributed generation; and an Internet of Things to help consumers control their energy consumption, he said.

By 2030, MISO predicts, wind and solar will take a 36% share of its generation, with coal representing just 22%, compared with 76% in 2005.

The RTO in March will publish its second Forward Report, which explores changing industry trends and their impact on the footprint.

“We continue to expect a steady stream of renewable generation entering the queue,” MISO Executive Director of Resource Planning Patrick Brown told RTO board members in December.

“We’ve got a big year ahead of us,” Bear said last month at MISO’s final Board Week of 2019.

Bear said the RTO will continue studying renewable integration in the footprint, contemplate changes to its capacity resource accreditation, explore more tactics to minimize the impact of increasing generation outages, firm up new transmission planning futures and evaluate dynamic transmission line ratings.

MISO President Clair Moeller foresees “a lot of knowledge transfer” over the next five years to train a younger workforce.

“MISO has enjoyed a lot of baby boomer expertise,” Moeller said during last month’s Board Week.

MISO also envisions its control room operators will one day use Alexa-type voice command technology — what it tentatively calls “Electra” — to monitor and mitigate transmission congestion.

Looming industry transformation has created a sense of urgency in the stakeholder community.

“We’re facing rapid change in the industry, and our current stakeholder cadence isn’t going to cut it,” Transmission-Dependent Utilities sector representative Kevin Van Oirschot said during the Advisory Committee’s meeting in June. He argued for quicker development of policies for distributed energy resources and storage devices.

SATA, DER and Solar: New Kids on the Block

MISO wrapped up the year by submitting to FERC its first rules governing the use of storage-as-transmission assets (SATA). The RTO’s 802-page proposal (ER20-588) would limit SATA to transmission-only functions operated by transmission owners and bar them from simultaneous participation in the energy markets — for now. (See Despite Pushback, MISO Pursuing TO-only SATA.) It said its plan will avoid introducing complexities around cost recovery, particularly related to how non-TOs would be compensated for providing transmission services.

Director of Planning Jeff Webb predicted that MISO will soon begin addressing SATA’s participation in the energy market.

“It’s something we need to address early in the year, I think, because folks are interested and dual-use storage is going to be complicated,” Webb said at the Planning Advisory Committee’s October meeting.

“In the spirit of marginalism, we’re addressing this one step at a time,” Principal Adviser of Market Design Mike Robinson told attendees at the Market Subcommittee’s meeting Oct. 10.

MISO also held seven workshops in 2019 to prepare for widespread DERs in its footprint and markets.

“We don’t have the answers yet, but we want the situational awareness in place,” Executive Director of Market Strategy and Design Scott Wright said during the last Board Week, adding that MISO is now focusing on what new communication protocols it may need to introduce to foster greater DER participation. (See MISO Explores Changes to Accommodate DER.) Even without a DER participation ruling from FERC, MISO has nevertheless reserved space for a participation model in its new market platform.

Bear also pointed out that MISO contains a few gigawatts of “legacy DERs,” which have for years existed outside the markets.

“How do we bring all that together and still operate the system is pretty complicated,” Bear said. “It’s a lot of snowflakes to bring together.”

Meanwhile, MISO has more than two years before it must roll out a participation model for electric storage resources. (See Storage Plans Clear FERC with Conditions.) The RTO must still address a handful of compliance requirements in its model, including crafting metering and accounting rules for distributed storage resources, the potential qualification of storage as fast-start resources and exemption of those resources from transmission charges when providing down-ramp capability.

MISO is also seeking to make solar resources dispatchable using rules nearly identical to those that brought wind resources under dispatch in 2011. (See “Solar Dispatch Imminent,” MISO Market Subcommittee Briefs: Dec. 3, 2019.) Solar could register under the dispatchable intermittent resources category as early as the first half of this year. The RTO currently has 314 MW of registered solar capacity.

“We expect solar to grow 10 to 20 times. It’s small now; we’d like to get ahead of it,” Wright said.

Facelift for MTEP Futures

MISO has committed to using more aggressive renewable generation projections in its annual transmission planning by 2021.

The effort will include development of three new 15-year future scenarios — Announced Plans, Accelerated Fleet Change and Advanced Electrification — that account for utilities’ decarbonization plans, the push toward renewable generation and increasing electrification in the footprint. (See Stakeholders Debate MISO Planning Futures.)

“Certainly, the drive in demand appears to be there,” MISO Director Nancy Lange observed.

Director Phyllis Currie urged the RTO to carefully balance increasing energy efficiency with electrification, the “savior” of the industry.

Vice President of System Planning Jennifer Curran said stakeholders have not yet reached “widespread agreement” on the futures retooling, noting that some think the proposed futures are too aggressive and others think the renewable predictions don’t go far enough.

Moeller said the 40% renewable penetration scenario outlined in the futures reflects MISO’s regional characteristics, with a nearly 80% penetration in the northwestern portion of the footprint and about 10 to 15% across MISO South.

The RTO hopes to finalize the new future scenarios in June or July. Directors asked executives to ensure it meets its self-imposed deadline.

MISO predicts it will have adequate resources in 2020 to meet a 9% planning reserve margin requirement above forecasted peak load but is bracing for the possibility of a winter emergency in January. (See MISO Taking Pains to Prepare for Moderate Winter.)

Last year roared in like a lion, as an extreme late-January cold snap prompted the largest deployment of load-modifying resources since MISO rolled out its current annual capacity auction design in 2013. The RTO exceeded the 3,000-MW contractual limit on the regional directional transfer limit to provide replacement for MISO South generation outages and derates. That region saw another emergency event May 16 in the face of outages and derates coupled with unseasonable heat. (See Emergencies Prompt MISO to Re-examine LMR Protocols.)

The January event prompted MISO to solicit stakeholder ideas on how to get additional capacity to address the North-South constraint, producing nine potential transmission projects. (See MISO Studying Projects to Cut North-South Tx Reliance.)

Cost Allocation Decision Made

MISO and PJM last year agreed to construct their first interregional market efficiency project, the $21.6 million reconstruction of the 138-kV Michigan City-Trail Creek-Bosserman line in northwestern Indiana. (See MISO Board OKs $4 Billion MTEP 19.) But the year ended without plans for projects along the seam with SPP, spurring an independent joint study from by the RTOs’ monitors. (See MISO, SPP Empty-handed After 3rd Project Study.)

MISO has emerged with a nearly complete cost allocation plan for its market efficiency projects (MEPs) despite stakeholder complaints the proposal ignores the wider benefits of sub-230-kV transmission lines.

After months of back-and-forth, MISO recently landed on a proposal that lowers the MEP threshold from 345 kV to 230 kV and eliminates the 20% postage stamp allocation. The plan also adds new benefit metrics for savings from the avoided costs for reliability projects and cost reductions related to the MISO-SPP contract path.

MISO’s new plan also eliminates the regional benefit-to-cost test on local economic projects between 100 and 230 kV, now proposing to perform only a local test on those projects.

Still, stakeholders said the cost-causation issues that prompted FERC’s June rejection of the first cost allocation plan remain, with some saying MISO is essentially ignoring an entire class of transmission projects that could be beneficial on a regional basis. (See MISO Makes U-turn on Cost Allocation Policy.)

“This is not ‘beneficiaries pay,’” Michigan Public Service Commission staffer Bonnie Janssen said of the new plan at a cost allocation meeting in early December.

“If we thought this was going to fail, we wouldn’t file it. We have a level of confidence this will work for us,” MISO Senior Manager of System Planning Jarred Miland responded. “We’re not justifying the projects regionally; we’re justifying them locally.”

“I certainly wouldn’t characterize this as a consensus proposal,” WEC Energy Group’s Chris Plante told RTO officials at the same meeting.

MISO plans to file the proposal in January and has included a provision to revisit the effectiveness of the cost allocation method in three years.

FERC Upholds 2015 Capacity Auction

MISO also closed the book on a four-year dispute after FERC in July cleared the 2015/16 Planning Resource Auction results, finding no market manipulation on the part of Dynegy (now Vistra Energy). (See FERC Clears MISO 2015/16 Auction Results.) The commission said it would take no further action to investigate allegations of market manipulation in the auction, which resulted in a $150/MW-day clearing price in Southern Illinois’ Zone 4.