By Amanda Durish Cook

MISO and SPP are moving ahead on a joint study focusing on seven projects, staff told stakeholders at a Sept. 7 Interregional Planning Stakeholder Advisory Committee meeting.

The seven needs in the coordinated study scope include four projects suggested by both RTOs and three proposals from just SPP. The original list of study prospects had 10 suggested projects from SPP and five from MISO focusing on the seam with SPP’s Integrated System.

The final scope contains projects both inside and outside of the Integrated System seam. (See “MISO-SPP Coordinated Study Focusing on 5 Interregional Areas in Dakotas,” MISO Planning Advisory Committee Briefs.)

“We landed on a hybrid number that include seven issues. Part of the reason that it was limited to seven is because that’s the number we think we can complete by April,” SPP’s Adam Bell said. The coordinated study will run into the first quarter of 2017. The transmission elements to be studied are:

• The Rugby tie linking the Western Area Power Administration-Upper Great Plains East balancing authority and Otter Tail Power in North Dakota;
• The Hankinson-Wahpeton 230-kV line and the Jamestown-Buffalo 345-kV line on the Dakotas–Minnesota border;
• The Granite Falls 115-kV circuit and the Lyon County 345-kV line in southwestern Minnesota;
• The Sioux Falls-Lawrence 115-kV line and the Sioux Falls-Split Rock 230-kV line near the South Dakota–Minnesota border;
• The Northeast-Charlotte 161-kV line and Northeast-Grand Ave West 161-kV line near the northern section of the Missouri–Kansas border;
• The Neosho-Riverton 161-kV line and the Neosho-Blackberry 345-kV line in southeastern Kansas; and
• The Brookline 345/161-kV circuit transformer in southwestern Missouri.

A majority of the 17 stakeholders that filed comments called for evaluating needs along the entire SPP-MISO seam and not individual geographic locations. However, some did support pruning the number of projects to a manageable number in light of the study deadline.

Bell said stakeholders gave “a lot of support” to studying all 11 interregional need candidates pulled from MISO’s 2016 Transmission Expansion Plan and SPP’s 2017 Integrated Transmission Planning 10-Year Assessment, which are both due to be completed in early 2017. (See SPP, MISO Try to Bridge Joint Study Scope Differences.)

Davey Lopez, MISO advisor of planning coordination and strategy, said this year’s targeted study will serve as a gateway for a large-scale overlay study process through 2019. “What we’re going to do is use this study as a foundation for a broader, longer-term effort in 2017. It’ll be a multiyear effort,” Lopez said.

MISO’s Eric Thoms said it’s yet to be seen how this year’s targeted study will feed into the overlay study, which will have its own scoping process.

Adam McKinney of the Missouri Public Service Commission repeated concerns that the RTOs were too quick to embark on an overlay study after last year’s targeted joint study failed to yield any interregional projects.

“It seems like you went on a very bad date and are proposing to get married … you’re going pie-in-the-sky here,” McKinney said.

Bell said McKinney had a point. “I personally am a strong believer that you can’t do the bigger things unless you do the smaller things. We have to be committed to this being actionable, and we don’t want to do studies for the sake of doing studies,” Bell said. Thoms added that “no-brainer” short-term studies will be given attention.

At a Sept. 9 meeting of SPP’s Seams Steering Committee, Steve Gaw, consultant for the Wind Coalition, asked if MISO was prepared to issue construction authorization if projects were identified. SPP Director of Interregional Relations David Kelley said MISO’s concern was authorizing projects that serve only as “Band-Aids” when the upcoming overlay study might reveal a larger, more permanent fix.

Paul Malone, transmission compliance and planning manager with the Nebraska Public Power District, pointed out that most of the seven projects are under MISO’s 345-kV threshold for cost allocation for market efficiency projects. He asked how MISO intends to fund them if they’re approved.

Kelley said unless the “ultimate solution” was at least a 345-kV rating, he didn’t have an answer. MISO was directed by FERC earlier in the year to remove its 345-kV threshold and $5 million cost minimum on interregional projects with PJM.

SPP asked FERC in July to apply the same directive to the MISO-SPP seam. In late July, MISO filed an answer saying that eliminating its SPP thresholds was outside the scope of the PJM order (ER16-1969). A response from FERC is pending.

Shelly-Ann Maye, representing Midwest Power Transmission Arkansas, asked if any of three additional needs identified from SPP could result in competitive bidding. Kelley said “there’s nothing to prevent” a competitive project from emerging from any of the needs. Kelley said that the RTO’s respective portions of the lines could be bid on using the RTOs’ Tariffs.

Stakeholders also asked the RTOs to explain the reasoning behind using MISO wind information from 2005 and 2006. Lopez said the 2006 wind profile that MISO is using is deemed to be appropriate for use and the RTO is not actually using 11-year-old wind data.

“It’s not the actual data we’re using. And we do plan on using a 2012 profile in the near future,” Lopez said. MISO will begin to use a 2012 wind profile beginning with MTEP 17, but the updated wind profile use won’t likely make it into the targeted study, he said.

Kelley added the targeted study will become a proving ground for interregional process enhancements between SPP and MISO. When the study is finished in April, suggested projects — if any — will be turned over for regional review and cost allocation discussions.