By Amanda Durish Cook

MISO’s Steering Committee this week submitted eight new possible market improvement ideas to the Market Subcommittee for stakeholder discussion.

During a May 23 conference call, Steering Committee Chair Tia Elliott said all new Market Roadmap ideas will receive more in-depth discussion at the subcommittee, which could assign them to other stakeholder committees. MISO will also hold a stakeholder workshop on June 7 to discuss the new ideas.

Originated by the Independent Market Monitor and stakeholders, the suggestions include:

• Creating financial incentives for members that provide frequency response service, as suggested by Indianapolis Power and Light.
• Allowing dispatchable intermittent resources to provide regulation service, a suggestion Xcel Energy submitted with the support of several other market participants.
• Evaluating the feasibility of implementing a day-ahead market on a 15-minute basis rather than on an hour-to-hour schedule under MISO’s market platform replacement project. Monitor David Patton claims that a more specific schedule would reduce make-whole payments.
• Removing transmission charges from coordinated transmission service transactions with PJM, another Monitor suggestion. MISO currently applies transmission charges to these transactions when they are offered, not just when they are scheduled, and the Monitor said the charges discourage CTS offers and “undermine the potential for substantial savings.”
• Expanding modeling to include equipment operating characteristics and constraints of other types of generation resources, much like MISO is improving modeling for combined cycle generators, as suggested by Ameren Missouri.
• Requiring that the installed capacity of planning resources be guaranteed as deliverable through firm transmission service, as suggested by the Monitor.
• Allowing load-modifying resources and emergency-only resources to receive Planning Resource Auction capacity credit “if they are expected to be reasonably available in an emergency,” according to the Monitor.
• Creating a look-ahead dispatch tool for generators. DTE Energy said MISO’s current practice of publishing the next dispatch instructions on a five-minute basis “can lead to inefficiencies with generators who need to bring on or off equipment to meet this dispatch.” DTE said it has support from several other market participants on the idea.

MISO Senior Manager of Market Strategy Mia Adams said that, after the workshop, the RTO and stakeholders will begin to rank the ideas in order of importance to determine when — if at all — MISO will begin to propose market changes to address them.

The Steering Committee has the authority to veto Market Roadmap improvement ideas before they reach the Market Subcommittee if they do not fit the definition of market improvements — although it cannot discuss the merits of the ideas — but it has never exercised that power.