A task force developing cost allocation rules for seams projects identified outside the FERC Order 1000 interregional process agreed last week to take another crack at crafting language more agreeable to stakeholders and staff.
SPP attorney Matt Harward will help guide the staff effort to produce the revised business practice, in coordination with the Seams Steering Committee’s small task force.
During the committee’s Sept. 9 meeting, Harward questioned whether a business practice is the correct method to solve the problem, while members raised concerns that the task force’s current draft of Revision Request 170 hews too closely to Tariff language rejected by FERC last year. (See FERC Rejects SPP Proposal for Seams Transmission Projects.)
Some members also said it doesn’t include a suitable interaction between seams projects and Order 1000 projects. ITC Holdings said RR 170 creates a “carve-out” from the Order 1000 process for seams projects and would exclude “a class of projects that have heretofore met various thresholds for Order 1000” by requiring they have a funding mechanism with a seams partner.
Staff drafted the initial business practice based on member input and the seams committee’s 2014 seams project policy paper, which was approved by the Board of Directors. The original language allows transmission providers to recommend the board direct staff to file requests with FERC that regionally allocate 100- to 300-kV seams projects if the zone in which the projects are located receives less than 60% of their benefits and if their benefit-to-cost ratios are less than 1.0.
Oklahoma Gas & Electric’s Jake Langthorn, who leads the task force, said he still hopes to meet next month’s deadline for finalizing the revised language. “It’s in staff’s hands,” he said.
The new language will have to be approved by the Seams Steering Committee and the Business Practice and Cost Allocation working groups before it can be brought before the Markets and Operations Policy Committee and the board.
SPP-AECI Models due in October
SPP interregional coordinator Adam Bell told the committee a joint study with Associated Electric Cooperative Inc. is continuing to focus on five target areas in Missouri. He promised models and transmission needs will be published before October “so we can start looking at different transmission options.”
The SPP-AECI Interregional Planning Stakeholder Advisory Committee will meet again next month. It is sticking to a January delivery of its final report.
M2M Payments Shifting?
The market-to-market update showed a rare payment of more than $606,000 from SPP to MISO for flowgate congestion along the RTOs’ seams in July, a sign of changing flows.
Since March 2015, MISO has paid SPP $11.2 million from congestion on the 10 most active permanent and temporary flowgates. However, MISO sent less than $632,000 to SPP for March 1 through July 31, 2016, for the 10 most active flowgates.
SPP to Share Z2 Bills This Week
SPP said it will release draft reports this week detailing the approximate payments owed by transmission customers under Attachment Z2 of the RTO’s Tariff.
The reports are the latest step in settling a contentious issue that dates back to 2008, when SPP was to have begun crediting and billing customers for system upgrades. In July, staff said it had identified $848.8 million in assigned costs from 158 creditable upgrade projects.
Members will also receive detailed data files to allow them to validate the results and perform shadow calculations. The draft reports and data files will cover March 2008 through June 2016.
SPP will then make available later this month payment-election forms for entities that owe money. Those companies are required to notify the RTO whether they will pay the full balance or enroll in a payment plan and pay the balance in 20 installments over a five-year period ending in August 2021.
In July, the board approved a 50-month extension of the original 10-month payment deadline. (See Board Approves Z2 Timeline Extension, Creates Task Force for Further Study.)
─ Tom Kleckner
