By Amanda Durish Cook

MISO, Big Rivers Electric Corp. and Century Aluminum have reached a settlement over the disputed system support resource agreement for Big Rivers’ Coleman plant in Hawesville, Ky. The settlement was submitted for FERC approval Oct. 6 (ER14-292, ER14-294).

MISO filed the SSR agreement in November 2013 to keep Coleman units 1-3 running for reliability. In December 2012, Big Rivers had asked to shut down the three boilers due to the loss of its power purchase agreements with a Century Aluminum smelter, the utility’s largest customer.

MISO won FERC approval to terminate the SSR after eight months, saying a special protection scheme and a service agreement between MISO and Century for reliability coordination service rendered it unnecessary.

Under the settlement, MISO will charge Big Rivers $25,000, with 99.5% of that amount credited back to Big Rivers and the remaining 0.5% credited to Southern Indiana Gas and Electric Co. Under separate bilateral agreements, Big Rivers will allocate its credit — $24,875 — to Century Aluminum.

Century agreed to drop its claims regarding the SSR agreement other than its “ability to petition … for the development and construction of transmission upgrades as a feasible alternative to future SSR agreements [and] claims arising out of the prioritization of Century’s entitlement, if any, to amounts paid by MISO to Big Rivers in connection with the Coleman SSR agreement under separate bilateral agreements.”