By Amanda Durish Cook
CARMEL, Ind. — The Stakeholder Governance Working Group sifted through the MISO governance guide paragraph by paragraph, refining priorities and committee hierarchies in the second of a two-day work session last Tuesday, part of the RTO’s stakeholder redesign.
The group doled out a draft of a redesigned pecking order for committees and their priorities. It also created assignment templates for groups that want to raise issues at meetings. MISO stakeholders will be required to complete an issue assignment template going forward for “ongoing issues with significant and substantial changes.”
Tia Elliott, director of regulatory affairs at NRG Energy, said the template will require members to clearly define their issue and explain what needs to be addressed instead of simply raising a hand at a meeting.
MISO Stakeholder Relations Specialist Alison Lane expressed concern that anyone could identify an issue, meaning that stakeholders could spend time on issues of lower importance. “That’s the one thing that makes me really balk on this,” Lane said.
Under the proposed revisions, MISO would be required to announce meetings and post agendas and supporting documents “well in advance.”
Stakeholders said MISO also should limit the number of priorities it identifies in its annual strategic planning process.
“The ideal number of priorities is somewhere in the range of three to five to be effective. Too many priorities dilute the process and results in no real priorities being identified,” the SGWG wrote. The group added that stakeholder priorities should “reflect key elements of the MISO strategic priorities.”
The SGWG is also asking how MISO’s Advisory Committee can become involved in MISO’s annual discussion on priority setting. Stakeholders mulled over how often parent entities should review the status of their issue prioritization among themselves and the working groups and task teams they’re charged with, settling for now on a semi-annual schedule.
“This isn’t our last crack at it. We’ll do some more wordsmithing and get a clean version,” said Bill SeDoris, director of MISO integration for Northern Indiana Public Service Co.
The guide, now about 45 pages, includes new wording to provide for the review and “parking” of issues that haven’t been addressed by their due dates. New draft language also states that “major decisions” made by subordinate entities aren’t considered final until an Advisory Committee review.
At one point, Lane discouraged the group from including too many parliamentary procedure instructions in the guide, insisting that stakeholders should know how to conduct meetings.
“I just hate for us to put language in on Robert’s Rules of Order instead of good information on policy,” Lane said.
Greg Schaefer, energy market policy manager at MidAmerican Energy, said much was accomplished in the two-day policy review.
The revised governance guide will not be released publicly until it is presented at the Jan. 27 Steering Committee meeting. SeDoris said he also hopes to put the draft language before a vote at the Feb. 9 SGWG meeting, with final approval at February’s Advisory Committee meeting.
“I think status quo was clearly not working,” said WPPI Energy’s Valy Goepfrich of the old stakeholder process. She said it is up to stakeholders and MISO to ensure the changes streamline policymaking. “This is all going to happen again unless we follow this process.”
Elliott said the governance guide is often turned to in other MISO meetings to settle matters. “There’s a lot of value here,” she said.
