LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Heather Starnes, counsel for the Missouri Joint Municipal Electric Utility Commission, briefed the Strategic Planning Committee on Thursday on the work that the Billing Determinant Task Force she chairs has done in developing a business practice for behind-the-meter generation.

The task force has produced a revision request (BRR158) that sets guidelines to determine a customer’s network load and define the parameters for what should be considered BTM generation.

However, the Regional Tariff Working Group remanded the change back to the task force in June to address SPP’s request to delineate responsibility for reporting network load. With the consolidation of SPP’s legacy balancing authorities into one, Starnes said the RTO has been having difficulty gathering complete zonal information from the transmission zones’ lead transmission owners.

“SPP’s position is they would like to see something created that mimics what it did before we created the consolidated balancing authority,” she said.

Under the revision, network load would include all network service, including the sum of generators’ metered values behind the delivery point. If the generator’s meter data is not available when it’s online, network customers would use its nameplate rating.

Starnes said the task force meets later this week and hopes to send BRR158 back to the RTWG for final consideration.

LP&L Task Force Looks at Precedent

SPC Chair Mike Wise, senior vice president of commercial operations and transmission for Golden Spread Electric Cooperative, encouraged the task force studying the migration of Lubbock Power & Light’s load to ERCOT to identify any strategic implications of the municipality’s exit. (See Texas PUC OKs ERCOT, SPP Studies on Lubbock Move.)

“This is an entirely new study process,” he said.

“Certainly there are broader implications beyond just Lubbock,” said Oklahoma Gas & Electric’s Jake Langthorn, the Exit Study Task Force’s chair. “It’s kind of an absence of facts … no one’s given much more thought at this point to what happens, but we’ll certainly pursue that as well.”

SPP and ERCOT are conducting separate studies on LP&L’s proposal to move 430 MW of load into the Texas market in June 2019. The grid operators will file a joint report to the Public Utility Commission of Texas next spring, though it has yet to be determined who will pay for the studies.

“Where’s Lubbock?” one member asked pointedly. PUC Chair Donna Nelson has said she doesn’t believe ERCOT ratepayers should pay for the studies, a sentiment shared in ERCOT.

“I didn’t get the sense from anyone in the group that SPP should pick up the costs,” Langthorn said. “We believe the party that wants to get it done, Lubbock, should pick up the costs.”

– Tom Kleckner