By Tom Kleckner

SPP staff will urge the Markets and Operations Policy Committee this week to recommend approval of just one of three interregional projects coming out of the SPP-MISO coordinated system plan (CSP) study. But even that project is a long shot because MISO has already decided against it.

SPP’s Brett Hooton told the Seams Steering Committee last week that staff is recommending approval of only the $18.5 million South Shreveport-Wallace Lake rebuild, an 11-mile, 138-kV project addressing area congestion. SPP says the project has a benefit-cost ratio of 11.86, assuming it pays 20% ($3.7 million), with the remainder paid by MISO.

Hooton said staff does not recommend the other two interregional projects evaluated as part of a regional review: the Alto-Swartz series reactor and the Elm Creek-NSUB 345-kV transmission line. He said both could be reevaluated in a future regional or interregional study.

Complicating matters, however, was MISO’s announcement before its Planning Advisory Committee last month that it would not recommend any of the three projects for approval to its board. Staff told the PAC it found all three projects’ costs outweighed the calculated benefits. MISO said the project showed a benefit-cost ratio of 0.86. (See “No Go for MISO-SPP Interregional Projects,” in MISO Planning Advisory Committee Briefs.)

The two RTOs face a December deadline to come to agreement on the interregional projects, though the current six-month window can be extended. MISO’s Board of Directors meets Dec. 10 and will take up staff’s recommendation on the interregional projects at that time.

“MISO can act or decide not to act,” said David Kelley, SPP’s director of interregional relations. “That will be a decision if MISO decides not to make a recommendation at all.”

Hooton told the SSC that MISO staff has been invited to present its study results at the Oct. 22 meeting of SPP’s Economic Studies Working Group, which has also endorsed the South Shreveport-Wallace Lake project. A MISO spokesperson said the RTO would participate in the conference call.

SPP’s review of the three projects took into account modeling updates since the CSP’s initial approval. These included transmission projects approved in January, updated generator information based on the 2017 Integrated Transmission Planning 10-year assessment and a new 500-kV MISO project to serve added industrial load in southern Louisiana.

MISO is evaluating alternatives to the Alto series reactor project for resolving local area congestion and reliability and transmission service needs in the market congestion planning study.

SPP Adds TO Members, Tie Lines with Integrated System

The Oct. 1 addition of the Integrated System has more than doubled SPP’s tie lines, from 233 to 498.

With the IS, SPP is now responsible for both DC ties from the Eastern Interconnection to ERCOT and seven DC ties to the Western Electricity Coordinating Council.

In addition to the system’s three main entities — Western Area Power Administration-Upper Great Plains, Basin Electric Power Cooperative and Heartland Consumers Power District — SPP added Basin Electric members Corn Belt Power Cooperative, East River Electric Power Cooperative and Northwest Iowa Power Cooperative.

Also coming aboard as TO members were NorthWestern Energy, Missouri River Energy Services and Harlan Municipal Utilities.

SPP now has 30 TO members. On Jan. 1, it will add two more when it picks up Basin Electric members Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association Cooperative and Central Power Electric Cooperative.

Tx Project Proposals Increase with Order 1000

SPP has seen a large increase in the number of transmission project proposals as a result of FERC Order 1000.

The RTO received more than 1,700 detailed project proposals in its last planning cycle as a part of its transmission-owner selection process, which allows for competitive bidding on certain transmission projects. SPP normally sees 300 to 400 proposals a cycle, according to Ben Bright, SPP’s manager of regulatory processes.

Bright told the Transmission Planning Improvement Task Force last week the sudden increase “creates a lot of churn and staff time,” but that SPP is working to improve the submittal forms and discussing other options to streamline the process. He said working with states on individual right-of-way issues has also added to staff’s workload.

“We’re expecting even more [proposals] this cycle,” Bright said.