TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — The empty chair at last week’s MISO Board of Directors meeting should be filled by fall, stakeholders learned during the RTO’s quarterly Board Week.

Former Director Thomas Rainwater vacated his position in April to serve on the board of a for-profit New England waste-to-energy company. (See Rainwater Exit Leaves Open Seat on MISO Board.)

“We miss him, but we thank him for all of the wonderful years of service he gave to this board,” Board Chairman Phyllis Currie said of Rainwater at the Thursday board meeting.

But the show must go on, and the board expects to announce a replacement during its September Board Week in St. Paul, Minn.

Nominating Committee member Jeff Dodd reminded stakeholders last week that only the board will get a chance to vote on the new member. Board counsel Karl Zobrist clarified that MISO’s bylaws stipulate that vacancies are dealt with by solely the board, and not through the usual Nominating Committee process and subsequent stakeholder vote.

The chosen candidate will serve the remaining 20 months of Rainwater’s three-year term and could choose to run for re-election for three subsequent three-year terms.

Currie said the board can expect to meet multiple times over the summer to select a candidate.

Meanwhile, the Nominating Committee has begun to discuss candidates to fill spots for three directors whose terms end this year: Todd Raba, H.B. “Trip” Doggett and Barbara Krumsiek. Both the Nominating Committee and the board are using search firm Russell Reynolds to identify a slate of candidates.

Besides Dodd, the Nominating Committee this year consists of Directors Baljit Dail, Mark Johnson and Theresa Wise; Minnesota Public Utilities Commissioner Matthew Schuerger occupies the other stakeholder seat on the committee.

Rainwater’s wasn’t the only empty seat at board committee meetings last week. Dail tuned in to Board Week via phone due to an ill-timed summons for jury duty.

3 More Solar-oriented Members

In a sign of solar’s increasing foothold in MISO, the board welcomed three more solar companies as non-transmission-owning members.

The board unanimously approved applications from Community Energy Solar and Urban Grid Solar Projects, as well as solar and storage developer Savion, which is being acquired by Macquarie’s London-based Green Investment Group.

All three will participate via MISO’s Independent Power Producers Sector.

MISO’s current generator interconnection queue consists of 644 projects totaling 101.2 GW, including more than 59 GW of prospective solar projects and 27 GW of wind. Executive Vice President of Market Development Strategy Richard Doying said the RTO’s long-term resource mix will be “heavily weighted toward renewables.”

Krumsiek requested that MISO executives continue providing the board with regular updates and illustrative charts on the status of the queue.

After hearing a report on the still unknown market changes MISO might have to make to manage a majority renewable mix, Currie noted that she heard a lot of qualifiers containing words like “uncertainty” and “possibility.”

“We’ll be looking for a new set of words, like ‘certainty’ [and] ‘definitely,’” Currie joked.

MISO Budgets

MISO is so far $1 million — or 1% — in the red in its operating budget this year, spending $92 million to date.

But the RTO’s capital spending is $2.2 million under budget at just $6.4 million.

CFO Melissa Brown said both budget variances stem from the timing of planned investments. And while she expects those variances to narrow by year-end, MISO will likely overshoot both budgets, incurring $274.5 million in operating expenses and $25.1 million in capital expenses, compared with the original estimates of $272.5 million and $24.3 million, respectively.

Vendor Delay on Market Platform Replacement

MISO’s ongoing market platform project is making “good progress” despite a new delay, Vice President of Market System Enhancements Todd Ramey told the board.

Ramey said delivery of a new day-ahead market clearing engine is running behind schedule, with vendor General Electric now expected to deliver at the end of the year instead of in August as originally scheduled. Once delivered, MISO will begin testing the engine’s capabilities.

Director Dail said the RTO’s IT team is working well “despite the circumstances.”

“Management is doing a stellar job in a very tough situation,” he said.

Ramey said MISO expects to spend about $21 million this year on the project and $28 million in 2020, though that latter number is subject to change. It forecasts it will spend a total $139.7 million on its market platform replacement.

In April, stakeholders pressed MISO on its March announcement that current platform vendor GE is now willing to support the existing platform through 2030. (See MISO Seeking Multiple Vendors for Market Platform Redesign.) They sought assurances that the RTO won’t take the next decade to finish the platform.

Senior IT Director Curtis Reister said MISO envisions using only some of that extra time for unforeseen and additional system testing, either on behalf of the RTO or market participants needing to integrate their software with the new system.

“There’s over 400 members that interact with the system, and we want to make sure we’re ready,” Reister told attendees at the Market Subcommittee meeting in April.

— Amanda Durish Cook