FERC last week approved SPP’s compliance filing responding to orders calling for more transparency into how RTOs analyze each other’s systems during interconnection studies (ER20-943).

In a letter order Friday, FERC accepted revisions to the SPP-MISO joint operating agreement (JOA) that point to where interconnection customers can find the RTO’s modeling details used in affected-system studies; added details to the sink assumptions; provided for more frequent information exchange during SPP’s three-phase interconnection process; and corrected an administrative error.

SPP’s revisions provided a specific section number for its generator interconnection process and business practices guidelines within Attachment V of its Tariff, where energy resource interconnection service (ERIS) and network resource interconnection service (NRIS) modeling information is contained.

The commission in October rolled back a portion of an earlier ruling, saying SPP, MISO and PJM don’t have to rely on one another’s dispatch assumptions to carry out an affected-system study. FERC had ruled in 2019 that the RTOs’ JOAs do not provide enough clarity on how they handle generator interconnection studies along their seams. (See FERC Walks Back Part of Affected-system Order.)

In a related order, the commission directed SPP to make a further compliance filing regarding affected-system coordination procedures (ER20-945).

FERC asked the RTO to explain why it proposed placing ERIS and NRIS modeling information in a particular section of the guidelines for the interconnection process and business practices, but not the section that provides the ERIS and NRIS modeling details the grid operator uses to study interconnection requests on its own system.

Commission Accepts FSR, Rate Schedule Changes

The commission last week accepted compliance filings in two other SPP dockets.

In a proposal to revise the grid operator’s fast-start pricing practices, SPP further revised its Tariff to provide that, for pricing purposes, fast-start resources’ (FSRs) composite offers will be calculated with commitment costs “in effect at the time of the commitment.”

The RTO also added language clarifying that an FSR’s commitment costs will be amortized over its maximum economic capacity operating limit and its minimum run time, and explaining how it calculates the commitment costs added to each breakpoint on the FSR’s energy offer curve (ER20-644).

FERC in July found that SPP’s original fast-start pricing revisions did not allow prices to reflect the marginal cost of serving load. (See “Directs Further Compliance Filing on Fast-start Resources,” FERC OKs 2 Changes from SPP’s HITT Work.)

The commission also accepted SPP’s Tariff revision clarifying the calculation of the transmission congestion rights (TCRs) administration service charge (ER20-2628).

FERC in February approved the RTO’s revisions to Schedule 1A of its Tariff that replace a broad rate schedule with four targeted ones, effective Jan. 1, 2021 (ER20-418). The new schedules take effect in January. (See “Board Approves Modernized Cost-recovery Structure,” SPP Board of Directors/Members Committee Briefs: Jan. 29, 2019.)

However, SPP discovered that the language mistakenly specified that the TCR service charge is calculated at the settlement location level. It added language that clarifies the charge type is calculated at the asset owner level and that two of the other new schedules are calculated at the settlement location level.

NIMECA, Corn Belt Finally Settle

FERC on Oct. 26 approved an uncontested partial settlement and settlement agreement between North Iowa Municipal Electric Cooperative Association member cities and other parties over their annual transmission revenue requirement, formula rate templates and formula rate implementation protocols (ER15-2028).

The settlement resolved all issues set for hearing other than those related to Corn Belt Power Cooperative’s ratemaking treatment of its grandfathered agreements (GFAs), ATRR and formula rate template. The GFAs were a sticking point during hearing and settlement judge procedures that began in 2015.

Joining Corn Belt as intervenors were the Missouri Public Service Commission, Basin Electric Power Cooperative, MidAmerican Energy, Interstate Power and Light, and Missouri River Energy Services.