SPP and MISO in October registered a record $14.63 million in market-to-market (M2M) settlements, more than doubling the amount set just the month before.
“It was a very big month,” SPP’s Jack Williamson told the Seams Steering Committee (SSC) on Wednesday.
In September, the RTOs recorded $7.19 million in M2M settlements. Both amounts accrued in SPP’s favor, as they have for 12 of the previous 13 months and 51 times in the 68 months since the two began the M2M process in March 2015.
MISO has now accrued $117.36 million to compensate SPP for redispatching transmission around congested flowgates on the former’s side of the seam.
“The upward trend in net [M2M] settlements is an indicator of underlying circumstances including real-time congestion and, ultimately, transmission constraints along our seam with MISO,” SPP spokesman Derek Wingfield said.
Staff said wind resources on the MISO side and various outages led to much of the congestion in October. Twelve permanent flowgates were binding for 412 hours, resulting in $6.92 million in M2M settlements, while 50 temporary flowgates bound for 1,359 hours, accounting for $7.71 million in payments.
The 161-kV Neosho-Riverton permanent flowgate in eastern Kansas is responsible for almost a third of the M2M settlements, with $35.68 million in SPP’s favor. That point was not lost on Adam McKinnie, an economist with the Missouri Public Service Commission.
“Every year we don’t work on a fix for the Neosho-Riverton flowgate is another year SPP is going to pay for a problem,” he said during the SSC meeting.
The RTOs say the process benefits customers in both footprints by providing a “more optimal solution to congestion than either party could have obtained on its own.” That hasn’t stopped SPP and MISO from working together to improve the M2M coordination processes and ensure that subsequent settlements between the regions are appropriate.
Wingfield said SPP is hopeful of finding “effective ways to create additional transmission capacity” to relieve congestion and ensure the M2M coordination processes “continue to provide significant reliability and economic benefits to both regions.”
SPP said it is evaluating solutions to the M2M issues through its generator interconnection and interregional planning processes. The recently announced targeted joint study with MISO is focused on the Upper Midwest seam where much of the congestion occurs between the RTOs. (See MISO, SPP Stakeholders Applaud New Joint Study.)
Regulators of both RTOs are also trying to address the issue through their SPP Regional State Committee-Organization of MISO States Seams Liaison Committee.
