By Amanda Durish Cook

CARMEL, Ind. — Over the next month, MISO stakeholders will rank 14 market improvements the RTO might undertake in 2019.

Stakeholders have until July 12 to take MISO’s Market Roadmap candidate ranking survey and organize eight new and six existing improvements by priority. The survey was announced during a June 7 workshop.

In addition to ranking the eight new submissions approved this spring for consideration by the Steering Committee, stakeholders will also consider six currently active initiatives that have already been discussed in stakeholder meetings. (See Steering Committee Advances MISO Market Improvement Ideas.)

The active items under consideration include:

• Improving generator modeling so it can depict more combinations of combined cycle units;
• Creating a short-term capacity reserve product available to solve capacity shortages within 30 minutes;
• Developing a multiday market forecast;
• Improving energy storage resource integration beyond what is required for FERC compliance;
• Automating dynamic ratings for transmission lines that offer temperature-adjusted and short-term emergency ratings; and
• Continuing to develop new market rules and requirements under MISO’s large resource availability and need effort. (See MISO Looks to Address Changing Resource Availability.)

MISO will review survey results at the August Market Subcommittee meeting, and then reconcile its preferred ranking with stakeholders’ prioritization to update a work plan for 2019 to 2023, said Lakisha Johnson, the RTO’s market strategy adviser.

The RTO has already issued a first draft of the roadmap based on internal rankings of the 14 proposals, designating its resource availability and need (RAN) effort, and plan to create a short-term capacity product as top priorities, followed by better modeling of combined cycle generators. Next on the list: creating a look-ahead dispatch tool, improved modeling of all generators and more comprehensive storage resource integration. The RTO ranked all other candidates as low importance.

This year’s ranking features only a partial list of roadmap ideas and doesn’t include improvements relegated to the “parking lot,” the lowest-ranked candidates that MISO and stakeholders predict will be useful sometime in the future. Parking lot items are reintroduced in the ranking for refreshed status every other year.

“Each year, we alternate between doing a fully exhaustive ranking of the parking lot versus only focusing on active and new candidates,” explained MISO Senior Manager of Market Strategy Mia Adams.

However, this year, MISO moved the suggestion for financial incentives for primary frequency response from the parking lot into the Market Roadmap because Indianapolis Power & Light submitted a new version of the suggestion.

Some stakeholders wondered if some improvements should be combined with others.

“There’s some concern if you make something of a Frankenstein roadmap product,” Adams said, adding that MISO may be open to bundling market improvements into portfolios when it makes sense.

Customized Energy Solutions’ Ted Kuhn said he thought the roadmap was meant for more in-depth market improvements than some of the new ones submitted this year, singling out Independent Market Monitor David Patton’s new recommendation to remove transmission charges from coordinated transmission service with PJM.

Patton said the coordinated transactions with PJM are rarely used, and the product has “failed” because MISO levies charges when an offer is made in addition to when an offer is struck.

But Kuhn said the Monitor’s suggestion could be completed “in a weekend” and questioned its consideration in the roadmap.

MISO Executive Director of Market Operations Jeff Bladen said Market Roadmap items represent “a variety of dimensions” and said stakeholders should come with suggestions on which products could be fast-tracked.

Northern Indiana Public Service Co.’s Bill SeDoris said one parking lot item should be considered sooner than next year — creating a compensation process for energy delivered during a system restoration event, an idea currently on hold. The item is timely and fits well into current discussions around resilience, SeDoris said. He added that the issue had been discussed recently in closed session discussions of the Reliable Operations Working Group.

Patton cautioned against focusing too much on the resilience “buzz word” when deciding which improvements to undertake.

SeDoris responded that MISO might appear remiss for not having discussed restoration energy compensation the next time it goes before FERC to discuss resilience. He said he would bring the issue to the Steering Committee’s next meeting in the hopes of reigniting interest in creating a compensation mechanism.