MISO will monitor maximum generation procedures as a result of pricing errors during a late July max gen warning, the RTO’s Kevin Larson said at last week’s Market Subcommittee meeting.
Jeff Bladen, executive director of market services, said pricing corrections for the multiple scheduled resources and one emergency resource were “relatively small” and represented less than $1/MWh. (See “June Energy Prices Up Across Footprint; New Emergency Pricing Encounters Snag in July,” MISO Informational Forum Briefs.)
David Sapper of Customized Energy Solutions asked if MISO could have withdrawn the max gen warning.
Rob Benbow, MISO’s senior director of systemwide operations, said the RTO forecast that high loads would persist throughout the day. “It’s one of those things where you’ve got data saying one thing, but … the load did not materialize,” Benbow said.
In the coming months, Bladen said MISO would review the performance of the new emergency offer floors.
Task Team to Take on 5-Minute Settlement Issue
MISO has charted a course for achieving five-minute settlement calculations with the creation of a six-month-long task team.
John Weissenborn, MISO’s director of market services, said the task team will discuss which day-ahead, real-time and financial transmission rights charges might be impacted, and identify changes needed for the Tariff and Business Practices Manuals. It will then shape the subsequent compliance filing due this winter.
Weissenborn said MISO hopes to have five-minute settlement language completed by December. The RTO expects five-minute settlements of energy resources and operating reserves in place by January 2018.
Currently, MISO’s real-time settlement occurs with an hourly average price while real-time operating reserve settlements are already conducted on a five-minute basis.
FERC Order 825, issued in June, directed RTOs to align settlement and dispatch intervals in real-time markets by January 2017.
However, MISO said even after Order 825 is implemented, interchange transactions will continue be settled at the 15-minute intervals that were instituted last June, as the settlement is performed using five-minute prices.
Weissenborn said MISO will have to explain the continued used of the 15-minute interchange transaction settlements in the compliance filing to FERC. “I think we’ll be successful in explaining that,” he said.
Brian Garnett of Duke Energy asked if the RTO expects companies to provide information on a five-minute basis.
Weissenborn said MISO “spent a lot of time talking with SPP on their implementation.” He said SPP experiences roughly 10% of market participants reporting at five-minute intervals and uses a curve fitting to calculate the rest. Weissenborn said most companies within SPP continue to report meter information hourly.
MISO Wants Future Control in Flow-Control Resources
Beibei Li, a senior operations engineer, said MISO is evaluating the need for optimization of flow-control resources to follow a real-time dispatch target.
MISO says its flow-control resources “are not directly represented in the market dispatch process” and that its inability to control them leads to inefficiency in the physical flow. This inefficiency, the RTO said, could impact AC system dispatch and “introduce unnecessary losses and congestion across the surrounding AC system.”
The RTO envisions increased use of several types of flow-control resources in the future, including HVDC lines, phase shifters, variable frequency transformers and series compensation flexible AC transmission system devices, designed to increase control and power transfer capability on the network. (See MISO Grid Meets ‘Big Data’.)
Li said MISO wants to be able to optimize its fleet of flow-control resources by the fourth quarter of 2018.
MISO staff plan to return to the October MSC meeting to deliver an update with project objectives and rough work plan.
Real-Time Offer Enhancements Start Time Delayed, Storage Assignments Divvied Up
Bladen reported that MISO’s real-time offer enhancements project will be delayed more than a month while MISO runs additional software testing.
The project, which will allow market participants to make overrides to real-time offers in MISO’s portal, is now scheduled for an early September go-live date. MISO was expecting to have the project completed by the end of July.
Although real-time offer enhancements are on hold, energy storage work is moving ahead. Bladen said MISO has divvied up tasks related to creating a storage policy.
Clarifying a storage interconnection definition has been referred to the Planning Advisory Committee and Interconnection Process Task Force. The Resource Adequacy Subcommittee will tackle how behind-the-meter generation can participate in the capacity market and decide how a stored energy resource capable of providing four hours of continuous power can participate in the regulation market.
Bladen also said MISO has had a low response rate to its annual customer opinion survey. MISO sent out 1,200 requests for responses to market participants. Bladen said just 9% of companies had responded as of Aug. 2. “That’s quite low, even at this stage in the process. We would very much like to get above the 9% we’ve got so far,” he said.
The survey window was extended by a week and is open until Aug. 12.
— Amanda Durish Cook
