By Chris O’Malley

MISO stakeholders have submitted recommendations for refining the out-of-cycle request process in the wake of transmission developer complaints over Entergy’s $187 million transmission upgrade near Lake Charles, La.

MISO approved the OOC request, which Entergy said was necessary to meet the sudden needs of an industrial customer, following a clamor from transmission developers complaining they were denied a chance to compete for the project. (See Entergy Out-of-Cycle Requests Win MISO Board OK.)

Transmission developers, transmission owners and ITC Holdings proposed numerous changes to MISO’s Transmission Planning Business Practices Manual. “The urgency and the need cannot be the result of inadequate planning, or worse, action that attempts to circumvent the robust, stakeholder-driven process” in the MISO Transmission Expansion Plan (MTEP), the TD sector said in comments submitted at a Planning Advisory Committee meeting.

Among the sector’s proposed changes is a requirement that OOC projects involving multiple load additions have “documented customer service requests.” One of the criticisms of the Entergy OOC request was that neither MISO nor stakeholders were privy to details about the Entergy customer or its specific load needs.

Entergy pointed broadly to an industrial renaissance in the Lake Charles region and said that it received unanticipated customer demand for service after the annual MTEP cutoff date. It said it was not permitted to disclose the customer.

The TD sector also proposed to insert language that would require MISO, before submitting a request for stakeholder review, to determine that a project “does not directly or indirectly eliminate the need for a Market Efficiency Project or Multi-Value Project” — projects that are subject to competition.

More Flexible Language

Meanwhile, TOs are seeking to tweak OOC eligibility rules. They proposed language that notes that “it is not possible to predict every event that will lead to the need for OOC treatment” of a baseline reliability project or “other” project. For example, projects may be driven by generation retirements or regulatory mandates, they said.

ITC Holdings, which did not join with the majority of transmission owner comments, also proposed to change the criteria for OOC project designation. ITC said its language change would allow for needs not specifically identified in the existing criteria. “For example, storm damage that necessitates a system change may require OOC review,” ITC said.

Alternatives to OOC

Other changes proposed for the Transmission Planning Business Practices Manual involve stakeholder reviews of OOC requests.

The TD sector complained that MISO moved too fast on Entergy’s Lake Charles request, without adequate feedback from stakeholders.

The sector is seeking at least one sub-regional planning meeting or public Technical Studies Task Force meeting “at which the out-of-cycle project and identified alternatives will be evaluated.” Stakeholders would be able to submit alternatives to an OOC at a following sub-regional or task force meeting.

TOs Assert Rights

At the PAC meeting last week, MISO officials attempted to compare the suggested stakeholder redlines to the BPM manual. Stakeholders offered some additional perspective.

“What we were trying to do is return this BPM language to its fundamental source, which is the transmission owner’s agreement,” said Cynthia Crane, principal regulatory analyst at ITC Holdings.

“And that’s what’s missing in all this dialog, it’s [that] the transmission owners agreement gives transmission owners certain rights” such as to upgrade, modify, alter or replace its facilities, she said. “We have to be really careful in what we are drafting here in order to not violate the TOA,” she added.

Jeff Webb, director of planning at MISO, said “The last thing you want to do is impede the TOs’ [ability to meet their] obligations.”

Suspicion of OOC Requests

But some speaking at the PAC meeting urged MISO to be vigilant about maintaining oversight, given the potential for utilities to misuse the OOC process.

“I can play this game all day where I need to build [a line] because I haven’t put my load in for three years now and I know it’s coming, but I don’t want to go through that competitive process stuff,” said Kip Fox, director of transmission strategy and grid development at American Electric Power, speaking of a hypothetical abuse. “So I’ll just wait until the four-year window closes and then I’ll submit it and all of the sudden it’s a reliability project.”

Fox told MISO: “You have to give us some confidence that those loads are being looked at.”

Webb noted the challenge in obtaining information from a load-serving entity making an OOC request. “What is the load-serving entity able and willing to disclose to defuse this sort of ‘proof issue’ that’s in front of us?”

Load-serving entities often counter that they’re prevented by nondisclosure agreements from revealing specifics about customer expansion plans.

Webb said MISO would review the feedback and return at a future meeting with draft language of its own.