By Amanda Durish Cook

CARMEL, Ind. — MISO’s staff, stakeholders and Monitor have identified several market improvements they want to see implemented in 2020, according to recently released Integrated Roadmap rankings.

The six projects that secured high-priority status next year include:

• creating short-term reserves;
• working on a speedier interconnection queue process;
• using dynamic or predictive transmission line ratings;
• changing the process for deploying demand response resources during capacity emergencies;
• requiring the full installed capacity of resources to be deliverable; and
• implementing automatic generation control (AGC) for fast-ramping resources.

Roadmap space was also reserved for MISO’s ongoing resource availability and need initiative.

MISO melded its own preferences with those of its stakeholders and Independent Market Monitor to produce the results, which were revealed at a special Integrated Roadmap workshop Thursday.

Many of the roadmap items have already received attention in 2019.

MISO is nearing a FERC filing to impose more stringent site control requirements and more at-risk milestone fees for interconnection customers entering the queue. (See MISO Zeroes in on Queue Overhaul Filing.) Likewise, the RTO expects to implement AGC for fast-ramping resources by the end of the year for its approximately 400 MW of fast-ramping resources.

The RTO also filed early last month to revise its Tariff to include a short-term reserve product definition, though it doesn’t plan to introduce the reserves until 2021. (See “MISO Preps Tariff for Short-term Reserves,” MISO Market Subcommittee Briefs: Oct. 10, 2019.)

MISO said it could implement all seven projects — save for dynamic line ratings (DLR) — on its existing server-based market platform instead of waiting on the new cloud-based platform, still under construction. MISO President Clair Moeller said DLR are difficult for the RTO to model in planning, citing varying instrumentation on lines and no standardized limits on exactly how much a conductor can be opened season to season.

“There are a lot of complicated things that go into that,” Moeller explained during a Board of Directors planning meeting in September.

Monitor staffer Michael Chiasson said Potomac Economics has estimated that MISO stands to save more than $150 million annually if it implements ambient-adjusted temperature line ratings. He said transmission owners remain reluctant to adopt DLR because it involves investment in equipment and manpower with little return for them at this point.

Meanwhile, the Organization of MISO States is drafting a filing in support of FERC encouraging the use of DLR.

“It’s an opportunity to get more out of existing lines; it could defer or offset the need for new lines,” new OMS President and Minnesota Public Utilities Commissioner Matt Schuerger said at the organization’s annual meeting in October. However, regulators from Indiana and Wisconsin said FERC should not mandate DLR, as the technology involved is still new and expensive.

Other Roadmap Items Checked off

MISO also reported that it expects to complete another handful of Integrated Roadmap-related items by the end of the year. The list includes stricter outage scheduling rules, more requirements around load-modifying resource availability, a more limited tolerance for uninstructed deviations from dispatch instructions, external capacity counting toward local clearing requirements in the capacity auction and a FERC-imposed doubled energy offer cap.