By Michael Kuser
ISO-NE on Friday announced its first competitive transmission solicitation to address reliability concerns associated with the upcoming retirement of the Mystic Generating Station in Everett, Mass.
The request for proposals seeks to address transmission facility overloads under peak load conditions in the Boston area, as well as system restoration concerns with the underground cable system in the area.
The RTO will review all the proposals in a two-step process before selecting the preferred solution. The deadline for phase 1 proposal submissions is 11 p.m. on March 4, 2020.
ISO-NE and its Planning Advisory Committee will review the proposals to ensure they address the identified needs and are feasible and cost competitive. The RTO will then identify finalists, who will be required to provide additional details to guide its selection of the preferred solution.
FERC earlier in December approved Tariff revisions refining ISO-NE’s rules for conducting competitive transmission solicitations in compliance with Order 1000, a process being tried for the first time now for solutions to non-time-sensitive needs identified in the RTO’s 2028 Boston Needs Assessment Update and Needs Assessment Addendum (ER20-92). (See FERC OKs ISO-NE RFP Rules.)
Exelon announced last year that it would retire Mystic in 2022, but FERC approved a cost-of-service agreement between the company and ISO-NE to keep Units 8 and 9 operating through May 2024.
Under the competitive process, any qualified transmission project sponsor (QTPS) may submit a phase 1 proposal, while NSTAR Electric and New England Power are required to submit a joint backstop transmission solution for consideration in response to the RFP.
According to the ISO-NE 2019 Regional System Plan (RSP) posted on Oct. 31, “the peak load needs were found to be non-time-sensitive because the needs were present in the study horizon cases of 2028 but were not observed in the time-sensitive cases of 2022.”
In addition, the system restoration need for reactive support is considered a non-time-sensitive need because the retirement date of Mystic 8 and 9 is beyond the three-year time-sensitive period, the RSP said.
The competitive solution process is detailed in Attachment K, Section 4.3 of the Tariff.
The pro forma agreement between the RTO and the selected QTPS spells out the development, design and construction of the project, including project milestones, status reports and cost-containment measures.
The RTO modeled its agreement on the designated entity agreement that PJM uses in its competitive transmission solicitation process.