By Amanda Durish Cook

CARMEL, Ind. — MISO last week proposed to change the deadlines and deliverability requirements for next year’s Planning Resource Auction as it continued to release detailed data from this year’s event.

At a Resource Adequacy Subcommittee meeting Wednesday, MISO Manager of Capacity Market Administration Eric Thoms kicked off his presentations on a lighthearted note as his team continues to break down the auction results.

“There’s a common term floating around: post-PRA hangover,” Thoms joked. “A lot of caffeine helps.”

Last month, MISO’s annual capacity auction cleared at $2.99/MW-day in all zones but Lower Michigan’s Zone 7, which cleared at $24.30/MW-day. Prices declined sharply compared with last year’s nearly uniform $10 clearing price. Altogether, the RTO committed 134.7 GW worth of capacity for the 2019/20 planning year beginning June 1. (See Most MISO Zones Clear at $3/MW-day in 2019/20 PRA.)

MISO is still releasing more detailed data on this year’s auction.

Thoms said multiple zones in MISO contained marginal resources that set the $2.99/MW-day price.

This year’s auction was the first to include external resource zones based on external balancing authorities. As a result, MISO cleared about 1,533 MW from SPP, PJM, Ohio Valley Electric Corp., LG&E Energy Transmission Services, Associated Electric Cooperative Inc., Southwestern Power Administration and the Tennessee Valley Authority.

MISO said the auction results were generally consistent with its loss-of-load expectation (LOLE) study, though LOLE load forecasts were slightly higher than those submitted by load-serving entities. The PRA’s system coincident peak of about 124.9 GW was slightly lower than the LOLE study prediction of 125.5 GW.

Timeline Change Next Year

MISO is considering changing some timelines before for the 2020/21 PRA, including deadlines for demand response testing, submission of generator verification testing data, behind-the-meter registration, unforced capacity values and the posting of preliminary auction data. In most cases, the various deadlines would be extended into the winter instead of late fall.

MISO is also proposing to open and close the offer window during “normal business hours.”

“My staff doesn’t like getting up at 12:01 a.m. to open the offer window and close it at 11:59 p.m. on a Friday night,” Thoms said.

The RTO would like to open the PRA’s four-day offer window at 8 a.m. ET and close at 6 p.m. Currently, the offer window runs from 12:01 a.m. on the first day of the auction through 11:59 p.m. on the fourth day.

“We’ve never received any offers at 2 a.m.,” Thoms added.

MISO said it may make a Tariff filing in summer to alter the PRA timeline.

New Deliverability Rules

MISO will also require that its traditional resources be deliverable to their full installed capacity (ICAP) values by the 2020/21 planning year auction.

The capacity deliverability rules will apply to resources with both network resource interconnection service (NRIS) and energy resource interconnection service (ERIS). However, the rules will not apply to intermittent resources — including wind, solar and storage devices — whose deliverability requirements will be based on some sort of historical or average output. The exact process has yet to be proposed.

Darrin Landstrom, MISO resource forecasting adviser, said the change in deliverability requirements won’t have a big impact on cleared megawatts in the auction. He said some generators may have to request broader transmission service, which could take up to a maximum of 105 days for study and approval. MISO estimates that about 1.4 GW of capacity clearing this year’s auction may not be deliverable to installed capacity levels.

Both the Independent Market Monitor and the Coalition of Midwest Power Producers (COMPP) have contended that MISO doesn’t properly account for deliverability because its LOLE study assumes that all capacity resources are fully deliverable on an ICAP basis. However, the RTO allows resources to demonstrate deliverability only up to the unforced capacity (UCAP) levels, which tend to be about 5 to 10% below full ICAP levels. FERC in March dismissed COMPP’s complaint on the matter, finding no Tariff violation. (See FERC: No Merit in MISO Deliverability Complaint.)

MISO requires capacity resources to demonstrate deliverability either by having NRIS, which stipulates that the entire ICAP be deliverable, or ERIS, which requires that firm transmission service be reserved up to the UCAP level.

The RTO has said it doesn’t hold capacity resources to different standards because it doesn’t require NRIS resources to perform to ICAP levels, instead requiring both to demonstrate deliverability up to their UCAP levels for the purposes of the capacity auction. But the RTO is now proposing to require ICAP-level performance across the board beginning with the 2020/21 auction.

MISO is seeking stakeholder opinions and suggestions on the new deliverability requirement through the end of the month. The RTO said it may make changes to its Business Practices Manuals.

COMPP’s Mark Volpe said he thought the changes might constitute a new “condition of service” that would require parallel changes to the Tariff as well as the BPMs.

MISO General Counsel Michael Kessler responded that the RTO’s legal team would monitor the proposal to see if it requires a Tariff revision.

Seasonal Plans

MISO is meanwhile still making plans to adopt a seasonal component for its capacity auction but will hold the proposal until the 2021/22 planning year. (See MISO Gives Tentative Nod to Seasonal Capacity Design.) RTO staff are currently conducting analyses on introducing a seasonal construct.