By Amanda Durish Cook
CARMEL, Ind. — MISO’s new Integrated Roadmap format didn’t fare well with members, judging by their comments at a special workshop Friday.
The Integrated Roadmap is a list of market improvements prioritized partly by the Independent Market Monitor’s and stakeholders’ preferences. It replaced MISO’s previous Market Roadmap earlier this year.
MISO expects to complete the prioritization and identify which market improvements it will seek in 2020 by early November, after it melds its ranking with stakeholders’ and the IMM’s.
Multiple stakeholders complained that the new procedure is chaotic and hard to follow, with several asking MISO to explain in detail how it tallies results from stakeholder voting.
This year MISO divided issue voting by which stakeholder committee would work through a possible proposal. The Market Subcommittee had the most projects to rank, while the Planning Advisory Committee and the Reliability Subcommittee had just one issue each.
MISO market strategy team member Christov Churchward, who joined MISO in June when roadmap ideas were already under discussion, led the stakeholder results presentation. Eight market improvement proposals submitted in spring were part of this year’s consideration. (See Steering Committee Advances Roadmap Suggestions.)
Despite the confusion, stakeholders rated a multiday market forecast, interconnection queue streamlining, better modeling of combined cycle generators, changing the process for deploying demand response during capacity emergencies and dynamic transmission line ratings as priorities. MISO’s ongoing resource availability and need project also earned a top spot from stakeholders.
The draft ranking released in spring closely tracked stakeholders’ prioritization, though MISO additionally assigned importance to integrating distributed energy resources and electric storage resources.
The RTO removed the Friday presentation from its public website after the meeting to correct errors. As of Monday, it had not been reposted.
Monitor David Patton has long advocated for temperature-adjusted line ratings in MISO, where most transmission owners do not adjust their facility ratings to reflect ambient temperatures and wind speeds. Patton has said temperature-adjusted ratings could have saved the RTO about $172 million in production costs over 2017 and 2018.
Xcel Energy’s Kari Hassler said it remains difficult to get the roadmap’s “parking lot” projects elevated to any importance. The parking lot — projects on indefinite hold — currently holds about two dozen market improvements deemed low priority.
“They’ve been low priority for several years. I don’t know if they ever get out of the parking lot, or get pushed somewhere else; maybe the basement?”
After a beat: “Oh wait, we’re in the basement,” Hassler laughed, referring to the workshop’s physical location in MISO’s Carmel, Ind., headquarters.
“Lower level!” multiple MISO staffers and stakeholders jokingly corrected her.
Short-term Reserves
Meanwhile, MISO continues to target an end-of-the-year filing to create a short-term reserve product. The RTO expects short-term reserves will clear $4 million in revenue annually when it goes live in 2021. It also estimates an approximate $5 million annual net production benefit when the reserves are used. Part of the savings comes from MISO operators having to take fewer out-of-market actions, for which it must make revenue sufficiency guarantee payments. (See “Short-term Reserve Filing Coming Shortly,” MISO Market Subcommittee Briefs: July 11, 2019.)
Stakeholders have asked if MISO’s savings estimates are based on real generating units and resources, with some asking why the RTO would pin its hopes on a 30-minute product when generators seldom offer through its 10-minute supplemental reserves program. However, Market Design Adviser Bill Peters said he’s spoken to owners of some facilities that can deliver within 30 minutes, but not 10 minutes.
