By Amanda Durish Cook
CARMEL, Ind. — MISO’s 2018 to-do list includes continuing efforts to expand energy storage participation, extensive software upgrades, a tardy five-minute settlements rollout and studies on its changing resource mix.
Storage Dialogue
In August, MISO stakeholders determined that creating energy storage market definitions and rules was the single biggest market issue for 2018. (See “Stakeholders Give Energy Storage Top Spot in Roadmap,” FERC Rule Would Boost Energy Storage, DER.)
In January, the task force plans to create a list of how storage currently participates in MISO markets and when it is and isn’t compensated to identify “gaps,” according to American Transmission Co.’s Bob McKee. Fernandes said that he didn’t want to simply roll storage benefits into a fixed transmission charge “on the backs of ratepayers.”
MISO Executive Director of Market Design Jeff Bladen said the RTO will work on storage attribute compensation “to the extent to which we can identify appropriate uncompensated attributes.” He warned that not all stakeholders will agree that certain attributes ought to be compensated.
External Capacity Zones
MISO hopes in 2018 to conclude yearslong efforts to introduce external capacity zones into its Planning Resource Auction. In response to the increase in intermittent generation and an aging baseload fleet that’s more prone to outages, the RTO also is considering setting capacity procurement requirements for load-serving entities. MISO predicts it will require just more than 17% of reserves for the 2018/19 planning year, a requirement that’s been steadily increasing year-over-year.
5-Minute Settlements Deferment
Some of MISO’s 2018 capital spending will be devoted to a delayed execution of FERC-ordered five-minute settlements.
In mid-November, MISO asked FERC to delay the settlements’ go-live date to July 1, instead of March 1 (ER18-314), after stakeholders said the RTO’s behind-schedule replacement of its overall settlements computer system would result in a rushed process for members to make their own software adaptions to accommodate the new process. The extra time will be used for software testing for both MISO and its member companies. (See MISO Members Seek Delay on Five-Minute Settlements.)
Raising the Offer Cap
The RTO also must regroup and plan direction on a revised Order 831 compliance filing after its energy offer cap design was rejected by FERC (ER18-300) in November.
FERC turned down MISO’s $1,000/MWh soft cap and $2,000/MWh hard cap, saying it would prohibit resources from submitting cost-based offers above the hard cap. (See MISO to Seek Waiver After FERC Rejects Offer Cap Plan.)
Queue Discussion Lined Up
MISO’s new interconnection queue design was accepted by FERC at the beginning of 2017, but there may be more changes coming.
Although the new queue design is meant to reduce the amount of time spent on studies, a very full queue project line-up has MISO staff warning stakeholders of delays.
Some stakeholders have already asked FERC to force additional rule changes. (See EDF Asks MISO to Revisit Queue Overhaul.)
“We just went through a rather exhaustive queue reform, but now that we’ve got the process and implemented it, there are a certain number of stakeholders that don’t believe it’s working,” said Wisconsin Public Service’s Chris Plante during the December Advisory Committee meeting.
MISO President Clair Moeller said the last time that the queue was this packed was in 2007.
About 60 GW of proposed generation is seeking interconnection, including 30 GW of wind, 15 GW of solar, 12 GW of natural gas and 600 MW of other resources. The queue also holds about 140 MW of prospective battery storage capacity.
“There’s a lot of capacity in the queue, and a lot of it won’t come online, but a lot of it will,” MISO CEO John Bear said during a Sept. 21 Board of Directors meeting.
Market Platform Replacement
MISO’s information technology department and vendor General Electric will begin in 2018 a seven-yearlong replacement of its market platform, the system responsible for operation of the day-ahead and real-time markets.
“These systems were designed in the late 90s and began operation in the early 2000s, and you think about all the technology advancements since then and how the cybersecurity threat landscape has changed,” Kevin Sherd, MISO director of forward operations planning, said at a December Market Subcommittee meeting.
The RTO expects to spend $21.7 million in 2018 on the project, one-sixth of its planned total spending over the next seven years. (See MISO Makes Case for $130M Market Platform Upgrade.)
MISO is looking for a system that “will best position us for the future,” Sherd said. The RTO’s current inflexible system, which has become increasingly challenged by market changes, will be swapped for a modular market platform allowing programs to be changed without impacting others. “Building something that is more adaptable is our core principle,” he said.
New Website
MISO will fully launch its new external website in the coming weeks. Sometime after January, MISO’s current site will shift to the web address old.misoenergy.com. The RTO will maintain its old public website through the first quarter to make certain that it still has a website in the event of a failure of the new website.
A beta version of the new website has been up since October at beta.misoenergy.org, where the RTO recently added log-in capability for meeting registrations.
Competitive Bidding in 2018
MISO will oversee the competitive bidding of the yet-unapproved $130 million Hartburg-Sabine 500-kV line market efficiency project in eastern Texas this year. (See MISO Board Approves $2.6B Transmission Spending Package.)
The Hartburg-Sabine project will be MISO’s second-ever competitively bid transmission project and the first such project to include a substation. The RTO plans to add two new staff members to oversee the competitive process. The line is intended to alleviate constraints in MISO South’s West of the Atchafalaya Basin load pocket area spanning Texas and Louisiana.
Meanwhile, work is underway on the Duff-Coleman 345-kV transmission project in Southern Indiana and Western Kentucky, MISO’s first competitively bid project. For most of 2018, LS Power subsidiary Republic Transmission will work on project design, environmental permitting and securing rights of way. Construction is slated to begin the fourth quarter of 2018. MISO selected Republic’s $49.8 million proposal for the new, 30-mile, 345-kV line last December. (See LS Power Unit Wins MISO’s First Competitive Project.) Republic said it expects to encounter “construction risks and challenges,” most notably acquiring federal permits to cross the Ohio River.
The PJM Relationship
MISO and PJM also hope to implement a two-part fix in early 2018 to remedy their double-charging of congestion fees on pseudo-tied generation. The RTOs are facing five complaints concerning overlapping congestion charges for pseudo-tied generators. (See MISO, PJM Pursue Pseudo-Tie Double-Charge Relief.)
The fix has been complicated by the discovery that PJM has been making errors on market-to-market calculations.
For years, PJM has been overstating its own transmission loading relief (TLR) because of a calculation error and its failure to order mandated tests required to define M2M constraints between the two RTOs. (See MISO Board, Monitor Seek Response to PJM M2M Missteps.)
“We’re going to explore with PJM what needs to happen retroactively and maybe what needs to happen going forward,” Bladen said during a Dec. 14 Market Subcommittee meeting.
Sign-of-the-Times Studies
MISO is planning studies in 2018 on how to respond to increasing natural gas and renewable generation. One study will gauge how the natural gas supply affects MISO’s dispatch ability.
Vice President of System Planning Jennifer Curran said the RTO and stakeholders will work throughout 2018 to “recognize the impact large gas pipeline contingencies have on the MISO system.”
Curran said MISO already has a good idea of where pipelines are located, but it wants to analyze the footprint’s gas supply and the potential consequences if some infrastructure were to fail.
MISO’s 2018 Transmission Expansion Plan will seek to identify where wind generation is likely to grow the fastest.
At the Annual Stakeholders’ Meeting in June, Board Chairman Michael Curran said he had confidence MISO could scale future obstacles, including portfolio evolution, renewable penetration and future federal and state regulations.
“It’s a very unsettling time. It’s almost as if the earth is moving from under us. And that may be the case in Oklahoma with fracking ― unproven of course,” he quipped.
