MISO officials are considering changes to how they conduct the annual Transmission Expansion Plan in order to focus future plans on long-term needs.

Officials told the Planning Advisory Committee meeting last week that they are considering changes to the first two steps of the seven-step futures development process.

“Year after year, the annual MTEP future definitions have modeled similar themes,” MISO said. From MTEP 12 through MTEP 16, the RTO has modeled low-growth, high-growth and business-as-usual cases.

Under the proposed change, planners would refresh the uncertainty variables annually based on whether there are new drivers for revising futures definitions.

Beginning with MTEP17, planners would use futures for as many as three years. MISO said sensitivities to existing futures can capture specific system needs without having to design new futures. For example, rate-based and mass-based compliance approaches can be studied as sensitivities to the Clean Power Plan future.

“After evaluating near-term needs for the last several MTEP cycles, it’s time to focus on long-term overlay design and development,” MISO said.

Stakeholders will discuss the proposed changes at the October and November PAC meetings. MISO hopes to finalize a revised process by end of the year.

MISO Proposing Changes to Review of Out-of-Cycle Projects

MISO has proposed changes to the way it handles the review of expedited projects to quell complaints over Entergy’s Lake Charles out-of-cycle transmission upgrades.

“We do think a few minor adjustments are necessary,” said MISO’s Matt Tackett, who presented the proposed changes.

Entergy’s $187 million out-of-cycle transmission project to serve additional load in the Lake Charles, La., industrial zone created a row that lasted for months. (See Entergy Out-of-Cycle Requests Win MISO Board OK.)

MISO is proposing that projects meeting the voltage and cost thresholds for classification as market efficiency projects be tested to see if they would have satisfied the 1.25 benefit-cost ratio. MISO’s presentation says this requirement would be for “transparency and informational purposes.”

The project would be reviewed by Sub-regional Planning Meetings (SPM) and/or the Technical Study Task Force (TSTF), where the submitting transmission owner would explain the need for the expedited review.

MISO planners will propose the project, or any alternative, for the MTEP, based on the project review and input from the SPM/TSTF.

The PAC would weigh in only at the end of the MTEP cycle.

Projects not eligible for expedited review would be any that are qualified as MEPs and are not required to meet transmission owner obligations. “It is expected that under normal circumstances, the transmission owners will identify the needs for projects early enough to be vetted in the normal MTEP process without the need for expedited review,” MISO said.

MISO will be accepting comments on the proposal until Oct. 16. After reviewing the comments, MISO will bring any revisions to the November PAC for the final proposal.

One of the most vocal critics of MISO’s handling of Entergy’s Lake Charles project, George Dawe of Duke-American Transmission Co., said the proposed changes are not an improvement.

“I’m more concerned now than I was with the original [Business Practices Manual] language,” said Dawe, who represents the Transmission Developer Sector at the PAC. “It seems to me you’ve gutted the BPM.”

Dawe said the current BPM allows the PAC sectors to register their displeasure with a proposed out-of-cycle project to the MISO board.

“It seems to us that a controversial expedited project should be required to pass more stringent review, not less review and no PAC vote,” he continued after the meeting. “Under the new process, the board would not be aware of [PAC stakeholder] displeasure until the end of the year when comments on the MTEP are solicited. By that time, the project would already have been de facto approved and potentially under development by the transmission owner.”

Former Wisconsin Public Service Commissioner Eric Callisto, now a partner with law firm Michael Best & Friedrich, also criticized the proposal, saying “I think the whole tone has changed in many ways.”

“As proposed [the changes] don’t strike the right balance between truly urgent needs that justify MISO’s expedited review versus the vast majority of projects that should make their way through the standard MTEP process,” he said afterward. “The proposal leans too much in favor of expedited review, to the detriment of an open and competitive process.”

MISO Seeks Feedback on Proposed Analysis of Final Carbon Rule

MISO is soliciting stakeholder feedback until Oct. 7 on a proposed framework for its study of the Environmental Protection Agency’s final Clean Power Plan.

The emissions targets will be examined under regional, sub-regional and state-level compliance, based on both rate- and mass-based caps. Planners also will consider a possible “equivalency exchange” rate between rate- and mass-based plans, given the possibility for disparity in state approaches.

Transmission needs will be identified and solutions developed for three futures. One assumes the CO₂ limits are met. The “accelerated” CPP future assumes the targets are surpassed as technological advancements and public policy makes renewables and demand-side resources more competitive than expected. The “partial” CPP future assumes legal challenges slow or end compliance, and only the early, 2022 emission targets are met.

In November, MISO will finalize the scope of the study, including futures definitions and modeling assumptions.

Through mid-2016, planners will model futures and sensitivities, considering state implementation plans as they become available.

Planners will develop transmission overlays beginning in 2016. MTEP 2016, however, will be based on the preliminary EPA draft rule.

No Go for MISO-SPP Interregional Projects

MISO will not recommend approval of three potential interregional projects with SPP following an additional analysis that incorporated stakeholder feedback, Arash Ghodsian, MISO’s technical adviser for economic studies, told PAC members. MISO said it worked with stakeholders and SPP to “sharpen [its] analysis” and concluded that none of the three projects were justified by the projected benefits. Last month, MISO told the PAC two of the three projects looked less attractive following additional modeling, indicating a “disconnect in coordination” between the two RTOs. (See 2 of 3 MISO-SPP Seams Projects Likely Doomed.)

Ghodsian said MISO updated its regional congestion analysis after making some modeling changes and incorporating four futures. Staff identified future load changes between interregional and regional models and replicated SPP’s assumptions on retirements resulting from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards.

“Given where we are with the projects, we don’t see why we need to go forward with any of them,” Ghodsian said. He said the projects are not more cost-effective at addressing the identified transmission issues than what MISO’s regional transmission plans build. Staff said its goal is not to find interregional projects for the sake of doing one, but to identify more cost-effective projects that would not be found in traditional regional planning. Ghodsian said MISO and SPP “effectively collaborated” during the study, gaining insight into their respective planning processes.

MISO’s revised analysis concluded:

• The $141 million Elm Creek-NSUB 345-kV project showed present value benefits over 20 years of $25.6 million and a benefit-cost ratio of 0.49.
• The $18.5 million rebuild of the S. Shreveport-Wallace Lake 138-kV line showed a benefit-cost ratio of 0.86.
• The $5.3 million series reactor on the Alto-Swartz 115-kV line shows $20.5 million in benefits and a B/C ratio of 4.34, including the adjusted production cost benefit for MISO South.

MISO is evaluating alternatives to the Alto series reactor project in the market congestion planning study.

AEP Agrees to Pay Share of Market Efficiency Project

MISO’s Digaunto Chatterjee shared a letter from American Electric Power affirming its commitment to “pick up incremental cost/payment” if MISO approves either the Rockport-Coleman 345-kV double circuit or the Duff-Rockport-Coleman 345-kV single circuit market efficiency projects.

MISO is choosing from among three MEP projects in Southern Indiana, the third a Duff-Coleman 345-kV single circuit line. (See MISO Plan to Revisit Runner-Up Tx Project Rekindles Stakeholder Angst.)

Staff have completed their economic and reliability evaluations. The reliability no-harm study identified constraints on two circuits for all three project alternatives, with an estimated mitigation cost of $200,000.

Staff said it will make its final recommendation during a special PAC meeting Sept. 25 but is still awaiting PJM’s final position and funding commitment.

The alternatives range in cost from $67.2 million to $152.5 million. PJM’s share of the alternatives could run as high as $85.2 million for Duff–Rockport–Coleman and $54.6 million for Rockport-Coleman, according to MISO staff.

MISO cited “Tariff challenges” to the Rockport-Coleman project, saying it is unclear how to bid out a double circuit line when a portion of the line is built for another RTO and not cost shared through the MISO Tariff. Tariff changes may be necessary to allow PJM to compensate MISO.

MISO is also studying two efficiency projects in the South with a total estimated cost of about $124 million that cleared the 1.25 B/C ratio: reconductoring the 115-kV Mabelvale-Bryant-Bryan South line near Little Rock, Ark., and building a 230-kV line from a substation to Lewis Creek in southeast Texas. Staff is continuing to gather information and stakeholder feedback on its analyses.

Second Round of Feedback on MTEP 15

MISO’s Omar Hellalat said a second draft of MTEP 15 has been posted and the RTO is currently accepting a second round of stakeholder feedback. These “substantive” comments are due Sept. 28; the feedback and MISO responses will be relayed to the MISO Board of Directors.

The PAC will hold a second discussion on the plan Oct. 14 before sending it on to the System Planning Committee for its October and November meetings. The MISO board will then take up the projects in December.

The first round of stakeholder feedback included grammatical and content comments and clarifying questions.

— Tom Kleckner and Rich Heidorn Jr.