By Tom Kleckner

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — SPP officials were questioned at last week’s Markets and Operations Policy Committee meeting as to why the Holistic Integrated Tariff Team was created and approved behind closed doors in March.

The Board of Directors approved the team’s creation during the same executive session at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport where it approved a set of policy recommendations to guide the Mountain West Transmission Group’s pending membership into SPP. (See SPP Begins Work of Integrating Mountain West.) Some stakeholders have taken to calling the team the “HITT squad.”

“Some of us didn’t hear the discussion about how the board thinks about this, or how it went about populating it and how the different entities were selected on it,” said The Wind Coalition’s Steve Gaw.

SPP Legal Counsel Paul Suskie, who is serving as the HITT’s staff secretary, said the team’s formation was presented to the board as a recommendation from staff, with the addition of “a couple of other people who could help out.”

“Honestly, it was a matter of getting it moving sooner rather than later,” Suskie said.

The team, comprising directors, regulators, staff and stakeholders, is charged with developing a set of high-level recommendations addressing the challenges facing SPP’s footprint. It is expected to complete its work with a written report by April 2019. (See SPP Team to Take ‘Holistic’ Look at Processes.)

“My point is, this did not need to be done in closed session,” Gaw said. “Stakeholders could have given some input to the board. This is a huge strategic undertaking.”

He said much of the HITT’s work will be dedicated to issues affecting renewable energy and noted that only one of the 16 team members is “related to those particular interests.”

“We would like to have had some degree of feedback to the board in open session,” Gaw said.

“All due respect, Steve, do you really believe we would have started down this road without stakeholder input?” responded SPP Director Julian Brix. “Someone had to make this decision. The board signed on to this because it said it would like a reasonable way to get answers to strategy questions we’ve had for some time. It will be an open process down the road. You’ve got to have a starting point, and this was it.”

SPP Vice President of Engineering Lanny Nickell reminded Gaw and the MOPC that the Strategic Planning Committee discussed creating such a group during a lengthy discussion in January. (See “Energy-only Resources Report Leads to Discussion, not Results,” SPP Strategic Planning Committee Briefs.)

“That’s really where we got started in identifying those interested in participating,” Nickell said.

SPP has proposed that most HITT meetings be held face to face, with stakeholders not on the team “encourage[d]” to participate by dialing in, unless they are presenting to the team in person. Those not on the team are also encouraged to ask questions and suggest future topics for the team to evaluate.

Staff has scheduled nine meetings for the HITT through Dec. 5. Two of those will follow the April and July board meetings, giving non-team members a chance to attend.