By Amanda Durish Cook

MISO is working to create market rules for capacity reserves that can be supplied within 30 minutes, though the RTO won’t have a sophisticated enough technology platform to support the new product for more than two years.

RTO staff told the Market Subcommittee on Nov. 8 that the earliest the new product could be rolled out is the first half of 2021 because it will require the new market platform.

MISO Director of Market Design Kevin Vannoy said the short-term reserve product will address issues that are “more severe” than can be solved by either the ramp product and regulation reserve, which is supplied within seconds, or issues that are “less severe” than the Disturbance Control Standard events requiring the RTO’s 10-minute contingency reserves.

“The idea is to get the 30-minute reserves reflecting actual needs [of the system] rather than trying to have the 10-minute reserves covering it,” Vannoy said.

“We have needs that we make out-of-market commitments for, but they’re not modeled in the market,” said Bill Peters of MISO’s market design team.

The short-term reserves would be furnished by either online generators dispatched according to opportunity costs or offline generators, which would be dispatched based on an offer price.

Peters said short-term reserves would help manage flows on SPP transmission between MISO Midwest and MISO South and aid areas hemmed in by transmission constraints or short on nimble reserves. They also will help meet load and avoid volatility as the RTO adds more intermittent resources.

MISO’s final ranking of Market Roadmap improvements placed the creation of short-term reserves at the highest priority, beating out projects to better model combined cycle generators, and respond to shifting resource availability and need.

Peters said the reserves could have market-wide, regional and local response requirements. He said MISO would dynamically schedule the reserves to a load pocket or region, assessing the state of the system, capacity needs, amount of cleared energy and amount of cleared short-term reserves before dispatch. He also said the RTO is considering applying a demand curve to pricing. Peters said the generators that sign up to provide the service will be tested to demonstrate they’re able to provide capacity within 30 minutes.

MISO has scheduled a Jan. 15 workshop to further discuss the conceptual design of a short-term reserve product.