MISO Independent Market Monitor David Patton on Thursday repeated his call for MISO, PJM and SPP to develop better procedures for transferring control of market-to-market constraints during high congestion.

“It would save all the RTOs a lot of money and improve efficiency,” Patton said at an April 13 Market Subcommittee meeting.

Patton pointed to the Feb. 7 transfer of a Midwest constraint to PJM that provided relief for $40 million worth of congestion. (See Tornadoes, Wind Generation Drive MISO Tx Congestion.) Market Monitor staffer Michael Wander said PJM still has monitoring control of the constraint in question, and it is not unusual for an RTO to keep control of a transferred constraint for longer periods. “They review it periodically and keep it unless there’s a change in the situation,” Wander said.

“The fact that PJM physically monitors this constraint doesn’t mean that MISO is disadvantaged in any way,” Patton told stakeholders.

Northern Indiana Public Service Co.’s Bill SeDoris asked if the Monitor is notified of the transfers.

“Not only are we appraised, we’re raising concerns when the transfer hasn’t taken place. We tend to be advocates of this,” Patton said.

The Monitor reserved his harshest criticism for existing pseudo-tie procedure.

“The only reasonable requirement in our opinion is to get rid of the pseudo-tie requirement into PJM. … The fact that anyone thinks pseudo-tying is a good idea is astounding to me,” said Patton, summarizing a Section 206 complaint the Monitor filed against PJM in early April (EL17-62). (See Pseudo-Tie Feud Rises as Patton, NYISO Protest PJM Proposal.)

Patton blasted PJM’s practice of requiring dispatch control of external generators. “This is an unprecedented requirement,” he said. All 12 MISO resources pseudo-tied into PJM were dispatched inefficiently, resulting in 114 new market-to-market constraints in 2015 and 2016, he said.

Patton encouraged stakeholders to file comments in support of his complaint.

Dynegy’s Mark Volpe asked if the spike in MISO-PJM pseudo-ties is the result of problems with MISO’s capacity market design.

“That certainly can’t be ignored,” said Patton. “But at this point, MISO’s excess capacity is a little higher than PJM’s.”

MISO: No Resettlements for Tariff Error

MISO will make a Section 205 filing seeking FERC approval for a waiver to void an eight-year-old Tariff mistake that prohibits resources incurring an excessive or deficient energy deployment charges from receiving day-ahead margin assurance payment for multiple hours.

The RTO’s Business Practices Manual only bars inefficient resources from receiving day-ahead margin assurance payment for the hour that the charge was incurred. (See MISO to Fix Recently Discovered Tariff Mistake.)

The waiver asks FERC to exclude resettlement of previous day-ahead margin assurance payments. The filing will include an affidavit from the Monitor recommending no resettlement.

“Resettlements would be extremely damaging to the market and create inefficient financial risk prospectively by undermining market confidence,” MISO said.

Bladen said there would be no technology changes to fix the mistake. “Essentially the only cost of this is administrative and legal,” he said.

Bladen also said MISO experienced a second-tier maximum generation event on April 4 in MISO South. He said MISO will review the event at the May 11 Market Subcommittee meeting. The Reliability Subcommittee will also review the event.

Expanded ELMP Price-Setting Begins May 1

MISO has filed for FERC approval to expand extended locational marginal price setting to online resources with a one-hour start-up time starting next month (ER17-1081).

The RTO will put the new eligibility into effect on May 1, Bladen said, and MISO expects to receive an order from FERC staff even without commission quorum. No one has protested the filing.

The new pricing structure preserves the requirement that offline resources must have a start time of 10 minutes or less to set prices. The move will increase the share of peaking resources eligible to set prices from 8% to 58% on a capacity basis, MISO said. (See “MISO to Expand ELMP Price Setting, but not to IMM’s Specs,” MISO Market Subcommittee Briefs.)