CARMEL, Ind. — MISO spent $1.3 million to evaluate construction bids in its first competitive transmission process, including administrative costs for issuing the request for proposals and drafting a post-selection report.

The work was funded entirely by the 11 developers that submitted proposals. Brian Pedersen, senior manager of competitive transmission, said MISO required a $100,000 deposit from each of the 11 developers to fund the cost of Duff-Coleman bid evaluation, but the RTO had to bill each of them another $21,000 to make up for all evaluation costs.

Stakeholders asked how the process could be streamlined to reduce costs.

“There aren’t a whole lot of economies to scale, since we still have to evaluate everything,” Pederson said at the March 15 Planning Advisory Committee meeting.

The RTO and stakeholders would discuss evaluation criteria and process transparency during the April meeting of the new Competitive Transmission Task Team, he said. May’s meeting will focus on possible improvements to MISO’s developer qualification process.

Pederson also said MISO will publicly post information from Republic Transmission’s first quarterly report on the Duff-Coleman project sometime during the second quarter. (See LS Power Unit Wins MISO’s First Competitive Project.)

— Amanda Durish Cook