MISO Board of Directors Chair Phyllis Currie last week paused to reflect on the unprecedented circumstances that converted the RTO’s Board Week into a teleconference format.

Currie expressed gratitude that MISO decided against in-person meetings for both Board Week and upcoming stakeholder committee meetings to help stem the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. The spring meetings were scheduled to be held in New Orleans, which has since become a hotspot for the disease.

“This is an extraordinary period of time with the coronavirus … and I thank MISO for accommodating the need for distancing,” Currie said during the Thursday conference call.

Currie said MISO is faithfully executing its purpose: “Keeping the lights on across America” during crisis times.

“This is really our job, and this is our mission, and I thank you,” Currie said to MISO staff and members. “You’re providing a service that most people take for granted.”

Currie said the board is likewise limiting its meetings to conference calls and canceling some meetups that don’t translate well to phone format.

MISO will discuss COVID-19 impacts on the grid with members during its nonpublic Reliable Operations Working Group meetings, RTO executives said. The pandemic’s effect on the grid will also be revisited in upcoming public meetings of MISO’s Reliability Subcommittee.

“Clair and I have stayed in different cities, making sure we don’t become ill at the same time,” MISO CEO John Bear said of himself and President Clair Moeller. Bear said the idea is to make sure that the RTO has uninterrupted senior management in place.

Bear said MISO continues to monitor the latest information from the White House and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as conducting its own consultations with infectious disease experts and epidemiologists.

“We’ve not had any employees confirmed to have the virus, but we have had employees exposed to someone with the virus, and they’re in self-quarantine,” Bear told stakeholders.

Bear said most MISO employees began working from home beginning March 17. The RTO has also been holding virtual all-hands meetings on Fridays, where more than 1,000 employees log in, he said.

He said MISO is making sure that employees have certain basic necessities as supply chains struggle to keep up with consumers stockpiling supplies, “simple things like toilet paper and cleaners,” he said.

Many utilities in the MISO territory have pledged to suspend disconnections for nonpayment but still meter usage for billing for when customers can catch up on payment.

Ameren is suspending all disconnections for nonpayment and forgiving any late payment fees for residential and business customers. It noted that normal billing for customers’ usage will continue as usual.

DTE Energy said it was halting all shutoffs for nonpayment for low-income customers through April 5 and possibly longer, depending on the outbreak trajectory. Consumers Energy likewise said its shutoff pause applies to certain classes of residential customers. Northern Indiana Public Service Co. said its suspension of shutoffs “will remain in effect until further notice” for residential, commercial and industrial customers. It also froze late-payment charges through May 1. Entergy pledged March 14 to temporarily suspend disconnections for the next 30 days.

Indianapolis Power and Light said it “recognizes the impact and stress COVID-19 is causing in people’s daily lives” when it announced a similar suspension through April 15.

“IPL recommends all customers do their best to maintain timely utility bill payments, as they will be responsible to pay all charges associated with usage during this period,” the utility said. “We will continue to read meters and send bills. Customers should pay what they can to avoid building up a large balance that will be difficult to pay off later.”

MISO on Budget

Three months into 2020, MISO is on track to meet its $264.7 million base expense budget.

CFO Melissa Brown said the RTO has so far spent $41.8 million of the $42.8 million it predicted it would spend by now. Brown said the $1 million in savings can be put down to smaller-than-expected building and computer maintenance costs.

The RTO is also trending toward a $50.7 million year-end spend on its $50.2 million investment expense budget. Brown said the overspending will likely be because it expended more time and resources on its resource availability and need solutions.

But Brown also warned that MISO has yet to account for any financial impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic. She said it will assess the financial implications and share them with the board at future meetings.

Nominating Committee Begins Work

MISO’s Nominating Committee is ready to begin a search for candidates that could fill two seats on the board this year.

The RTO’s Advisory Committee installed North Dakota Public Service Commissioner Julie Fedorchak and Otter Tail Power’s Stacie Hebert, of the Transmission Owners sector, as the two stakeholder representatives on the Nominating Committee this year, which vets and selects board candidates to be put to member voting. The AC late last year decided against doubling the number of stakeholder representatives to serve on the committee. (See No-go for MISO Board Election Changes.)

Directors Theresa Wise and Baljit Dail will reach their term limits at the end of the year. Wise is eligible to serve another three-year term; Dail has already exceeded his total three-term limit through a special waiver in 2017, which was granted to retain his IT expertise. (See “Committee Permits Consideration of Extra Term for Dail,” MISO BoD Briefs: June 22, 2017.)

MISO Reports IT Incident

MISO had one IT concern to report for the quarter during a scorecard presentation to the board during a Tuesday conference call of the board’s Technology Committee.

Chief Information Security Officer Keri Glitch said the control room was forced to manage operations manually without the dispatch system for 75 minutes on Jan. 23.

Glitch said the problem originated during a planned market business continuity transfer for the day-ahead, real-time (DART) market system. During the data transfer, the DART system “could not connect to the market database, resulting in a unit dispatch system outage” from 4 to 5:15 p.m. ET. She explained that the root cause of the problem was that the system administrator selected an outdated option for direct connectivity to the failover site, which should have been removed from the tool.

Over that time, the control room managed operations manually without the dispatch system until connection to the market database was restored. Glitch said MISO members didn’t incur any losses as a result of the downtime.

“If you can’t hear it in my voice, I’m not happy. The bottom line is this should not happen and will not happen again,” Glitch said. “We have had many, many conversations with the employees. … A lot of this is training awareness of how critical these systems are.”

Glitch said MISO is retraining staff and looking into automating the manual portion of the process. She said she would speak more about the issue in closed session of the committee.

— Amanda Durish Cook