On Feb. 12, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission asked for comments on the pros and cons of six potential rule changes intended to push PJM and MISO to create cross-border transmission projects (EL13-88). The changes were proposed by Northern Indiana Public Service Co. (NIPSCO) in December 2013.

The commission asked commenters to opine on the costs and technical feasibility of implementing requirements that MISO and PJM:

• Run their cross-border transmission planning process concurrently with the RTOs’ regional transmission planning cycles, rather than after them.
• Develop a single model that uses the same assumptions in the cross-border transmission planning process. Until the joint model is developed, the RTOs would be required to ensure consistency between their planning analyses and apply their reliability criteria and modeling assumptions consistently.
• Use a common set of criteria in evaluating cross-border market efficiency projects.
• Consider all known benefits, including avoidance of future market-to-market (M2M) payments made to reallocate short-term transmission capacity in real-time operations, when evaluating cross-border market efficiency projects.
• Establish a process for joint planning and cost allocation of lower-voltage and lower-cost cross-border upgrades.
• Amend their Joint Operating Agreement to improve the processes for new generator interconnections and generation retirements.

The commission also asked for comments on whether persistent M2M payments indicate the need for new transmission and on NIPSCO’s and others’ estimates of M2M payments. FERC also asked for examples of projects considered but not developed under the cross-border transmission planning process and the reasons why they were not completed.