By Tom Kleckner

SPP last week released tentative billing statements for transmission upgrades for 2008 to 2016, while its Z2 Task Force developed six options for addressing Group B and Group C waiver requests.

The task force hopes to recommend one of the options for handling $114 million in upgrades under Tariff Attachment Z2 to the Markets and Operations Policy Committee next month. (See Board Approves Z2 Timeline Extension, Creates Task Force for Further Study.)

SPP’s most recent calculations show Group B members (transmission customers that SPP said didn’t qualify for waivers from paying their Z2 bills) have $36.9 million in directly assigned upgrade costs. Directly assigned costs for Group C (members who didn’t request waivers) total $77 million. The costs of Group A members, whose waiver requests were supported by SPP staff, totaled about $56.4 million.

The options for Groups B and C include:

• Rejecting all waiver requests, as staff recommended to the Board of Directors in July. The board did not adopt the recommendation at the time.
• Accepting all waivers as a one-time request to address catch-up concerns. Costs would be recovered through the Tariff’s regional/zonal cost allocation.
• Regionally uplifting $44 million in directly assigned upgrade costs on Oklahoma Gas & Electric’s Windspeed II, a 126-mile, $218 million project, following a suggestion from Sunflower Electric Power, which said the project affects more transmission requests than any other.
• Regionally uplifting the entire cost of the Windspeed project.
• Applying previously approved “roll-in” criteria for assigning certain transmission facilities’ costs to the region.

American Electric Power resurrected its proposal from July’s MOPC meeting as a sixth option. AEP’s suggestion, which was rejected by the MOPC, would waive all of both group’s directly assigned costs and recover them through SPP’s base plan funding mechanism. (See SPP MOPC Recommends 5-Year Timetable for Resolving $849M Z2 Bill.)

At the members’ request, staff will study the financial impacts of each option by zone and customer, and supply the numbers before the task force’s Sept. 30 meeting.

The group approved a motion to consider both Groups B and C for waivers, though the Group C members never requested waivers. “Just because a group didn’t ask for waivers, they shouldn’t be treated any differently,” reasoned Southwestern Public Service’s Bill Grant.

Z2 Summary Reports

As promised, SPP released draft summary reports on the Z2 revenue credits and charges incurred from 2008 to 2016. The information was made available to market participants through the RTO’s member section of the Marketplace Portal.

SPP said it is providing this information so transmission customers can validate their revenue credits and charges and determine whether to opt for a payment plan.

The information reflects the results of a second run of historical data processing, covering the March 2008-June 2016 period. SPP said it plans to do a third run before issuing final Z2 settlement invoices in November. It warned customers they will see “small” differences between the summary reports and the November invoices.

The summary reports, based on initial settlement calculations, depict all financial amounts as positive amounts; receivable amounts are typically shown as negative amounts in SPP’s normal transmission statements and invoices.

Companies registered as both transmission owners and transmission customers or generator-interconnection customers received one owner report and a second customer report.

SPP also posted additional data used to make the initial settlement calculations to a password-protected GlobalScape folder. Customers will have to complete a nondisclosure agreement to access the data.