By Amanda Durish Cook
CARMEL, Ind. — MISO is home to more than 4.5 GW of unregistered distributed energy resources, much of it for nonresidential use, the Organization of MISO States estimates.
The figure comes from OMS’ annual DER survey, which was presented to MISO stakeholders at a special workshop Tuesday.
The total breaks down to 1.2 GW of residential and 3.4 GW of nonresidential capacity, much of which is solar. Unsurprisingly, the group found that residential installations tend to be smaller than nonresidential, said Tricia DeBleeckere, senior planning director for the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission.
DeBleeckere said utility interconnection requests remain the primary source of data on DERs.
This year’s numbers are up sharply over last year’s, which showed 2.5 GW of unregistered DER capacity. OMS said unregistered residential capacity increased by 170% year over year, while nonresidential rose 62%. By comparison, MISO contains about 12 GW of registered load-modifying resources.
OMS also noted that the RTO is home to about 31 DER pilot programs.
Of the roughly 50 utilities that responded to this year’s survey, more than half said they were considering investments that could improve their DER visibility. Eleven said they were considering implementing some type of DER management system.
Still, most survey respondents said they have yet to experience a transmission-level impact stemming from DER use. The utilities also said low natural gas prices appear to be discouraging some types of DER adoption and encouraging others, such as customer-owned combined heat and power.
FERC last month asked RTOs for detailed information on aggregated DER portfolios in their wholesale markets — the first significant movement in a possible rulemaking on DER in more than a year. (See FERC Sends DER Data Request to RTOs.)
MISO counsel Michael Kessler said the RTO is also still evaluating FERC’s data request before it decides whether to reach out to members for help with DER estimates.
“We’re still figuring out where we’re going on the responses,” Kessler said.
Meanwhile, MISO is still waiting on FERC to provide a clear definition of DER before the RTO begins work with stakeholders on a possible participation model.
“We’re waiting for FERC to define what it is,” DER Program Manager Kristin Swenson told stakeholders.
Swenson predicted that several players will need to be involved to plan for and manage an influx of distributed resources. She also said there is much speculation within MISO over what a possible Notice of Proposed Rulemaking might look like.
“We have to work very closely with regulators on the state level,” Swenson said. “MISO has a piece of this. Transmission has a piece of this. Consumers have a piece of this. … It’s going to take some time, and that’s why we’re here today.”
There are a “million ideas” but “no golden rule yet,” MISO adviser Robert Merring said.
MISO also admits it needs to improve existing market paradigms for more distributed participation, including the registration process, communication system and demand response resource tool, which is used to collect meter data for the settlement of LMRs after they’re called up for emergency events.
“We recognize we have a disparate set of tools to manage these resources, and we’re working on that,” MISO adviser Michael Robinson said.
WPPI Energy economist Valy Goepfrich said the future level of interest in DERs remains an open-ended question. She said integration into the wholesale markets would likely depend on economics but noted that her company’s LMRs currently have little interest in forging ahead into wholesale markets themselves.
“The wholesale market is a tough business. It’s not for the faint of heart. That’s why we’re all regulated utilities,” she said, smiling.
MISO will resume DER workshops in November and through early 2020.
