By Tom Kleckner

SANTA FE, N.M. — Only a few months away from revising its transmission planning process, SPP is continuing to work under the old Integrated Transmission Planning (ITP) format.

The Markets and Operations Policy Committee last week approved the scopes for the final studies to be conducted under the old rules. (See “MOPC Approves TWG, ESWG Recommendations” below.) Members then sat through the Transmission Planning Improvement Task Force’s joint education session for the MOPC and the Strategic Planning Committee, getting an early look at recommendations that will be made in July.

The task force, assigned to develop “progressive, forward-thinking, regional planning processes,” shared its current recommendations, which include:

• Implementing an annual ITP planning cycle;
• Using a standardized study scope;
• Establishing common reliability planning models; and
• Creating a staff/stakeholder accountability program by stressing timely data exchanges, reviews and approvals within the planning process.

“We want to treat this as a process improvement,” said NextEra Energy Transmission’s Brian Gedrich, the task force’s chair.

SPP currently conducts a 20-year assessment focused on a strategic economic study (ITP20) without issuing notices to construct (NTCs); a 10-year assessment that can issue NTCs for mostly 100-kV projects and above; and a near-term assessment aimed at reliability needs and maintaining long-term firm service over a five-year horizon.

Gedrich said the current process winds up creating too many models “that don’t necessarily line up with each other,” and that scope documents can be “a real problem.”

“We recreate a scope every time we start, and that can take a lot of time to get through the approval process,” he said. “What’s key to speeding up the process is [eliminating] slippage that has to be re-evaluated. Today, we basically have a three-year cycle. The [studies] are done sequentially in their own silos. We’ve found the three-year planning cycle to be too long … it can’t be responsive to changes.”

Gedrich said using a “holistic” planning approach and reducing the number of futures in new analyses to three would also speed up the process.

“We need to standardize the scope up front and not recreate the document every time,” he said. “The futures would be more incremental changes.”

The task force is recommending a transition to the new planning process in September 2017. The model builds and scope development would lead to the initial ITP assessment, to be completed in July 2019.

To keep up with the timeline, the current planning cycle will need to be completed and the necessary revisions to the new process would have to implemented. Those changes would include modifying the Tariff and other governing documents and securing the necessary tools and resources.

“The goal is results,” Gedrich said. “We don’t want to fail at the beginning. We want to be ready, so we don’t hit a glitch.”

The task force has a white paper out for review and comment. It will come back to the MOPC and Board of Directors in July for final approval.

MOPC Approves TWG, ESWG Recommendations

The MOPC accepted the Transmission Working Group’s 2017 near-term and 2017 10-year assessments, an assessment of the system’s compliance with NERC transmission planning (TPL) reliability standards, and re-evaluations of the 2016 near-term assessment and NTC evaluations.

The 2016 ITPNT identified 86 proposed upgrades comprising 49 projects and recommended 35 NTCs be issued. Fourteen additional NTCs are to be modified. The assessment will also result in eight NTCs being withdrawn, primarily because alternative projects were identified. The $140 million in withdrawn NTCs leaves the 2016 ITPNT with nearly $230 million in approved NTCs.

The recommended 2017 ITPNT scope will evaluate as potential violations NERC TPL-001-4 planning events that do not allow for nonconsequential load loss or curtailment of firm transmission service.

Stakeholders debated the scope’s use of NERC standards. Antoine Lucas, SPP’s planning director, said staff is seeking to incorporate the new TPL standard into the planning process rather than doing TPL assessments separately as in the past.

“This will be the last ITPNT as we know it,” American Electric Power’s Richard Ross said. “I don’t want staff [spending] a whole lot of time trying to fix problems with a process that’s about to be abandoned.”

The committee also approved the TWG’s recommendation to remove consideration of TPL-001-4 events not already considered in the 2017 ITP10’s original scope. The motion passed with 13 nay votes and five abstentions.

TWG Chair Travis Hyde, of Oklahoma Gas and Electric, said the group’s review of the TPL-001-4 standard revealed the 2017 ITP10 models did not meet SPP’s modeling requirements and that the assessment could not be used for compliance.

The committee also approved the Economic Studies Working Group’s updates to the 2017 ITP10 scope, which will result in using natural gas prices from the ABB reference case rather than NYMEX futures and updating language to allow for a Clean Power Plan and a reference case portfolio.

The ESWG must still complete needs assessments and develop solutions and a portfolio for the 2017 ITP10.