By Amanda Durish Cook

CARMEL, Ind. — MISO’s recent resource adequacy filings with FERC will affect the timeline of an otherwise unremarkable capacity auction in terms of load forecasts, stakeholders learned last week.

MISO staff confirmed the 2019/20 Planning Resource Auction numbers haven’t moved much from the previous planning year, in line with estimates made last month. (See Early MISO PRA Data Show Little Change.)

The RTO predicted systemwide coincident peak load will be about 122 GW for the period, up from the 121.6-GW prediction made in January for the planning year. The RTO’s total zonal coincident peak now stands at 125.6 GW, up from an earlier 125.3-GW prediction.

MISO now estimates an almost 135-GW planning reserve margin requirement, also up from the earlier 134.4-GW estimate. Similarly, combined local resource requirements are up slightly from 152.6 GW to nearly 153 GW.

“A lot of the data is pretty close to the data we presented in January,” Tim Bachus, MISO capacity market administration analyst, said during a Feb. 6 Resource Adequacy Subcommittee meeting.

Final preliminary data will be presented during the March RASC meeting. MISO will conduct its seventh annual PRA during the second week of April.

In some cases, PRA data deadlines have already passed for resources hoping to participate in the auction — particularly load-modifying resources. Generation owners were also expected to provide the Independent Market Monitor with data to calculate reference levels by Feb. 12, while load-serving entities have until Feb. 15 to request revisions to their coincident peak demand figures.

LMR Registration Confusion

Existing and new LMR registrations, usually due Feb. 1 and Feb. 15 respectively, will be due March 1 only if FERC approves a Tariff filing meant to ensure LMRs are available as promised. MISO said it expects FERC to rule on the matter by Feb. 20, and a more detailed LMR registration survey under the RTO’s proposal is available now.

If the filing is approved, MISO will ask some LMRs with a lead time greater than two hours and that are available fewer than nine months out of the year to submit their monthly megawatt availability and a documented required notification time necessary to begin generating. (See MISO Moves to Examine Long-term Supply Measures.) MISO will allow LMR owners that have already registered their asset according to the current Tariff to amend their registration surveys.

If FERC rejects the filing, MISO will revert to its current LMR registration process, with LMRs not already registered disqualified from auction participation.

Some stakeholders said the competing timelines are creating confusion. Others pointed out that several LMRs have already submitted registration in accordance with MISO’s current Tariff. MISO staff said it would reopen registrations to make sure the new data requirements are met if approved.

Manager of Capacity Market Administration Eric Thoms reassured stakeholders that, should FERC reject the filing, the RTO would not use LMRs’ additional data, and the current process would stand without change.

Stakeholders asked if MISO was satisfied with this year’s load forecast data supplied by LSEs.

“There are always a few numbers that might be outside the curve,” Bachus said, adding that MISO determined there were good reasons for the discrepancies after reaching out to LSEs.

“In the end, there were no concerns about any numbers that may have seemed out of line,” Bachus said.

As in years past, stakeholders continued to question why MISO combines the forecast data for Iowa and Missouri in Local Resource Zones 3 and 5 and all of MISO South. The RTO has long combined PRA data in zones where pivotal suppliers are sparse and their private information could be revealed. Stakeholders again asked MISO to separate the data by zone to provide a clearer picture of resource adequacy.

Meanwhile, MISO will on March 25 send out its annual resource adequacy survey in cooperation with the Organization of MISO States. Completed surveys are due from LSEs and independent power producers by April 15. The RTO will present results in June and July.