SPP staff said this week that stakeholders’ overall satisfaction with the RTO’s services and staff’s performance in three specific areas all rose during 2020, even as survey responses dropped.

Staff shared the results of SPP’s annual stakeholder satisfaction survey and other assessments during the Board of Directors’ meeting Monday.

Scored on a 5-point scale, stakeholders gave SPP an overall 3.87 rating for 2020, a 0.25 increase from 2019. A year ago, overall satisfaction was only up 0.03 points. Stakeholders gave staff similar boosts of between 0.24 and 0.27 points when asked their satisfaction with responsiveness, accuracy of information and problem resolution.

However, the survey’s response rate fell from 18.6% a year ago to 13.6% this year. SPP sent out 1,283 invitations to the survey, with 174 stakeholders responding.

“Sometimes, people’s response rate is related to whether they feel anyone is responding to them,” board Chair Larry Altenbaumer said. “We want people to understand this is an important part of the process. We need to demonstrate that more effectively than we have in the past … to increase those numbers in the future.”

Staff reminded the board during its yearly metrics review of organizational effectiveness that they take all the comments received from the surveys and assign them to managers for action. SPP also makes periodic progress reports to the Markets and Operations Policy Committee.

“I know there is an ongoing activity, but we haven’t done as good a job as sharing with members the activities we do,” Altenbaumer said. “Too often, it comes across as a one-shot deal in December.”

Directors and members also reviewed evaluations of the board and the organizational groups’ self-assessments. The directors’ and Members Committee’s average rating of the board (4.25 out of 5) was identical to 2019. SPP extended the survey to the MOPC for the first time this year; the committee gave the board an average rating of 3.79.

Members Committee representatives rated the board’s performance lower than the directors did in all 23 assessed categories, ranging from 0.09 to 1.13 points lower.

“It’s important for those of us on the board to understand what would drive [the Members Committee] to say this,” SPP CEO Barbara Sugg said. She said staff would bring back thoughts on the gaps to the January board meeting.

COO Lanny Nickell will bring a proposed set of key performance indicators (KPIs) based on actual data to the same meeting. He shared a strawman that would reduce the number of KPIs to four: working together, responsibility and economics, keeping the lights on today, and keeping the lights on in the future.

Wolf Creek-Blackberry Timeline Tweaked

The board approved a consent agenda that added another year for regulatory approval to the 345-kV Wolf Creek-Blackberry competitive project. Staff determined that the current Jan. 1, 2022, deadline gave Kansas regulators only 66 days instead of the normal 180 to verify whether the potential transmission owner has gained utility status and, with it, the right of eminent domain. Staff recommended the deadline be extended to Jan. 1, 2023.

In September, the board lifted a suspension of the project and authorized the Oversight Committee to create an industry expert panel to evaluate responses to a request for proposals, which staff have since issued. (See “Board Lifts Suspension on Competitive Upgrade,” SPP Board of Directors/MC Briefs: Sept. 22, 2020.)

SPP expects to award the project a notification to construct next October. It is expected to cost $152 million, which members will fund according to load-ratio share.

With its sign-off of the consent agenda, the board approved the Corporate Governance Committee’s nomination of ITC Holdings’ Alan Myers as the MOPC’s vice chair. Myers will serve alongside acting MOPC Chair Denise Buffington, of Evergy.

Myers has chaired the Economic Studies Working Group since 2008 and will commence another two-year term in January following the board’s approval of his CGC nomination.

Also approved as stakeholder group chairs were: American Electric Power’s Richard Ross (Market Working Group); AEP’s Brian Johnson (Project Cost Working Group); Evergy’s John Anderson (System Protection and Control Working Group); Oklahoma Gas & Electric’s Jerad Ethridge (Model Development Working Group); and City Utilities of Springfield (Mo.)’s Russell Moore (Operations Training Users Forum).

Ross, Ethridge and Moore are all incumbents.

OG&E’s McAuley Says Goodbye

The meeting was the last as a Members Committee representative for Greg McAuley, OG&E’s director of RTO policy and development and one of the more vocal proponents of more equitable cost allocations for transmission upgrades. McAuley is returning to his native Florida to spend more time with his elderly mother.

“He has been one of the truly great contributors to SPP,” Altenbaumer said. “Please note there were many times we didn’t agree on things, but he always approached those discussions constructively.”

McAuley thanked staff and stakeholders for welcoming him into the SPP community when “I was new to the role.”

“The professionalism of this group is incredible. Your leadership, and Barbara’s now, is really doing some good work,” McAuley said in response to Altenbaumer. “Hopefully, our paths will cross in the not-too-distant future.”

“I’m saddened to see you leave the SPP family,” Sugg told McAuley.

April Board Meeting to be Virtual

Altenbaumer concluded the year’s final virtual board meeting by telling directors and members to expect more of the same in the first half of 2021. SPP had hoped to return to in-person meetings by April, but Altenbaumer said that after conferring with Sugg, they concluded it was too soon to end virtual meetings.

“While we were hopeful of getting through this surge and benefiting from a widespread vaccine, we just aren’t that confident that it’ll be the scenario we’ll face in April,” he said.

SPP’s current schedule lists the July and October board meetings as being held in-person at its Little Rock, Ark., headquarters.