CARMEL, IND. — Independent Market Monitor David Patton told the MISO Board of Directors’ Markets Committee last week that the RTO should see significant benefits from its market-to-market coordination with SPP and the ability to adjust gas reference prices in real time.

Patton said the market-to-market coordination should reduce the impact of SPP’s transmission loading relief (TLR) actions on MISO.

About 20% of the congestion pricing at MISO generator locations in December resulted from SPP TLRs, Patton said.

“While congestion costs for SPP constraints remain low, dispatch and pricing effects of these constraints were significant in December,” Patton said in a presentation to the committee.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the SPP-MISO M2M rules last month. (See SPP, MISO Move Ahead on Flowgate Rules.) They will take effect March 1.

“When SPP issues TLRs, we generally price these constraints at vastly higher levels than in SPP,” Patton said. “Market-to-market should help.”

Real-Time Feed on Gas Prices

Patton said his office has implemented new procedures for adjusting reference prices during volatile gas pricing periods. Patton said MISO’s access to real-time data on gas prices is “a huge step forward. We’ve already implemented it and it works well.”

The new tools have been used only once because the winter has thus far not been “stressful,” Patton said.