By Amanda Durish Cook

MISO’s Planning Advisory Committee will vote by email on whether to send the RTO’s nearly $4 billion 2019 Transmission Expansion Plan (MTEP 19) to its Board of Directors for approval — but the committee could also advise two changes just ahead of the vote.

PAC leadership was set to conduct its annual vote over whether to move the plan forward for board consideration at its Wednesday meeting, but members called for an email vote.

MISO’s Environmental and Other Stakeholder Groups sector, led by the Clean Grid Alliance (CGA), also tacked on two separate motions that call for planners to re-examine a possible market efficiency project and delay the RTO’s first storage-as-transmission asset (SATA) project for more study on alternatives. Taken together, PAC members have three ballots to consider. Voting will take place through Wednesday.

The PAC will decide on the plan itself, plus two additional stakeholder-originated motions that might delay a project or add another to the buildout package.

Project Manager Sandy Boegeman said MTEP 19 now contains 479 transmission projects costing $3.97 billion. The RTO will post the final MTEP 19 project list Nov. 6.

Helena-to-Hampton Corners

CGA’s first motion asks that MISO revisit the Helena-to-Hampton Corners second-circuit project, which the group said should have been included in MTEP 19 as a market efficiency project. (See MISO Readies MTEP 19, Debates Futures Change.) The $36.1 million, 345-kV project, originally identified in this year’s Market Congestion Planning Study, was set to solve congestion in southern Minnesota at a 4.22:1 benefit-to-cost ratio, but MISO said the project quickly lost value once forecasted wind generation was removed from the equation.

Sean Brady, CGA’s regional policy manager for the East, said he thought MISO’s order of evaluations shortchanged the benefits of the project because the RTO simply finished evaluations first on the nearby 18-mile Helena-to-Scott County line rebuild, which was studied as a network upgrade for proposed generation in the interconnection queue.

“It’s a more cost-effective line based on the information we’ve seen,” Brady said of the Helena-to-Hampton Corners project.

“We believe that we followed the Tariff. We believe that we followed the process,” MISO Director of Planning Jeff Webb said, adding that the RTO could review its policy of studying interconnection upgrades before it evaluates an annual crop of reliability projects.

Webb added that there are going to be “sequencing” issues as long as MISO evaluates transmission projects by type.

Entergy’s Yarrow Etheredge said stakeholders shouldn’t “upend” the planning process this year. She reminded stakeholders that the Helena-to-Hampton Corners project can always be re-examined as part of MTEP 20.

Waupaca Opposition

CGA also submitted a second motion to delay MTEP 19’s lone SATA project until MISO examines more alternatives. (See MISO Recommending 1st Storage-as-Tx Project.)

Brady said he thought the economic analysis behind American Transmission Co.’s Waupaca-area energy storage project was “lacking,” and he urged MISO to re-evaluate the project. He said it’s likely that a traditional wires solution would have more economic benefits.

“A wires solution would be available 24/7, 365, where a battery solution is only available two hours at a time,” Brady said.

Other PAC members seemed unreceptive to the idea.

Etheredge said it wasn’t the PAC’s place to “second-guess” MISO’s MTEP evaluations. ATC’s Bob McKee also pointed out that MISO did evaluate the battery solution against traditional wires alternatives submitted by his company. He pointed out that CGA itself wasn’t offering up any alternatives with its opposition.

CGA’s Natalie McIntire argued that MISO’s evaluation process for SATA projects is nascent and largely untested.

“To me, it’s not clear we have an agreed-upon process to evaluate projects like these,” McIntire said.

MISO has yet to file its SATA proposal with Despite Pushback, MISO Pursuing TO-only SATA.) So far, the Waupaca project remains in Appendix B of the MTEP 19 report, listing projects considered to have a documented need but not yet ready to deploy, with costs not included in MTEP spending totals. The board will hold a separate vote to approve the project after the RTO has SATA rules in place.

New Task Team Put to Vote

As if three motions weren’t enough, PAC members will also decide via email ballot whether to form a new task team to examine sharply rising network upgrades in the interconnection queue and whether MISO’s annual transmission planning process might be overlooking projects. Renewable proponents raised the idea at the September PAC meeting as a growing number of stakeholders press the RTO to address transmission planning assumptions and devise ways to prevent new generation projects from becoming responsible for most transmission development. (See More MISO Members Join Call for Tx Planning Change.)

Sector representatives first debated whether the creation of new task teams needed to go before the Steering Committee, which assigns new issues to stakeholder committees. Webb said he didn’t want to burden the SC unnecessarily with a “bureaucratic loop,” as the PAC doesn’t need permission to spin off its own task teams.

Special MTEP 20 Studies

The PAC will also work out what areas MISO will single out for one-off studies as part of MTEP 20.

In lieu of newly designed futures scenarios next year, MISO has promised unique, targeted studies in the MTEP 20 cycle to identify possible transmission projects. The RTO this summer decided to stop work on a futures update for 2020. (See MISO Halts Futures Work for 2020, Plans 2021 Rebuild.)

Members of the Environmental and Transmission Owners sectors have recommended the RTO study the Minnesota-Wisconsin transfer limitation — known to the MISO community as MWEX — because of the constraint’s voltage stability issues and its location between renewable-rich areas of the footprint and customer bases to the east.

“This study is recommended not only to evaluate this particular constraint, but also as a valuable opportunity to better understand how to assess the implications of non-thermal constraints within the MISO footprint in future economic planning studies,” the TOs wrote in comments to the RTO.

EDF Renewables also asked the RTO for a review of the top congested flowgates in MISO West in light of generation additions and retirements.