Below is a summary of the issues scheduled to be brought to a vote at the Markets and Reliability Committee on Thursday. Each item is listed by agenda number, description and projected time of discussion, followed by a summary of the issue and links to prior coverage in RTO Insider.

RTO Insider will be in Wilmington covering the discussions and votes. See next Tuesday’s newsletter for a full report.

2. PJM MANUALS (9:15-9:25)

The MRC will be asked to endorse changes to Manual 14B: PJM Region Transmission Planning Process implementing PJM’s new capacity import limits.

Reason for Change: Stakeholders approved the limits in November out of concerns that PJM might lack sufficient transmission to accommodate its growing volume of capacity imports. Cleared imports grew from about 3,000 MW to more than 4,500 MW from 2009-2012 before more than doubling to nearly 7,500 MW this year.

Impact: The revised methodology will limit external generation resources in next year’s base capacity auction to 6,200 MW — a 17% drop from the volume of imports that cleared in the May 2013 auction, while also setting five import zones with their own limits. (See Members OK Capacity Import Limit; Prices May Rise.)

3. PROPOSED DEMAND RESPONSE PRODUCT SUBSTITUTION CLARIFICATION (9:25-9:45)

The committee will be asked to endorse changes to Manual 18: PJM Capacity Market to clarify Tariff provisions that allow substitutions of demand response resources.

The change would allow curtailment service providers to substitute a non-performing DR registration with one or more other DR registrations in the same geographic area and with the same lead time.

Providers may use Limited DR to replace Annual DR but the substitution will not count against Limited’s 10 dispatch-per-year cap. Annual DR has no limits on the number of dispatches.

4. QTU DEFICIENCY CHARGE AND CREDIT RATE (9:45-10:00)

Transmission developer H-P Energy Resources LLC will ask members to consider reducing what the company says are excessive credit requirements for Qualifying Transmission Upgrade (QTU) projects.

QTUs are small transmission projects — typically less than $10 million — that can be offered into the capacity market to relieve transmission constraints in Locational Deliverability Areas (LDAs).

The company told the MRC last month that the current rules require credit postings that can be multiples of the construction cost, creating a barrier to entry that artificially raises prices in LDAs.

The MRC will vote on a proposed problem statement and issue charge to consider changes in the requirements.