By Amanda Durish Cook
MISO’s operators met their targets for minimizing online generation on 99.2% of the days in 2015, a record.
“This represents the best annual performance MISO has ever achieved on this metric,” said Vice President of Human Resources Greg Powell. “This also represents the best year that MISO’s ever had on unit commitment efficiency.”
The operators’ performance is penalized for Reliability Assessment Commitment (RAC) unit commitments and rewarded when online generation is minimized and sufficient to meet demand and constraints. Each day that MISO operators miss the goal costs market participants about $200,000 in uplift charges. Powell examined unit commitment efficiency and other annual metrics during a short-term incentive presentation at the Jan. 26 Human Resources Committee of the Board of Directors meeting. About 84% of short-term incentives were paid out, compared to 2014’s 69% and 2006’s all-time record of 87%.
MISO gave staff excellent ratings for unit commitment, reliability and compliance performance and said all strategic goals were completed.
The lowest ratings were on metrics for cost efficiency improvement, the customer satisfaction survey and capital budget. The RTO also said the year’s customer satisfaction survey received a passing — “threshold-plus” — grade, with 81% of those surveyed providing an average rating of five or better from a seven-point scale.
MISO rated its market funding efficiency — a measure of shortfalls or surpluses in financial transmission rights funding — at 94.8%, earning it a threshold-plus grade.
Operations spending came in 1.2% over budget, earning an “excellent” rating.
In keeping with the reliability performance of the prior eight years, no severe failures or violations occurred in 2015.
“2015 was a pretty good year for MISO,” Powell summed up.
Board member Paul Feldman praised 2015’s operation, saying MISO resolved the year’s issues “quietly” and expeditiously.
MISO Director Judy Walsh said she would like the RTO to examine what drives incentive payout, as hitting the metrics is becoming “day-to-day” routine.
