By Amanda Durish Cook

FERC staff on Wednesday accepted MISO’s pro forma pseudo-tie agreement with a warning that a full-strength commission could in the future reject the proposal.

MISO’s accepted filing fleshed out details in response to multiple questions posed by FERC staff in May regarding the original proposed agreement.

Still, FERC staff said the updated agreement could still be found to be discriminatory by the commission and is subject to refunds (ER17-1061). (See FERC Seeks More Details on MISO Pseudo-Tie Proposal.) The pro forma became retroactively effective March 15.

In answer to FERC staff’s question about the extent of MISO’s coordination with PJM in developing the agreement, the RTO said the two RTOs engaged in ongoing discussions through MISO’s Pseudo-Tie Issues Task Team “over several months in 2016 and restarted again in first quarter of 2017.”

“These discussions are continuing today,” the RTO noted.

MISO also cited the RTOs’ recent, twin filings to alter their joint operating agreement to better manage pseudo-tied resources. (See “MISO and PJM File JOA Pseudo-Tie Rules,” MISO Reliability Subcommittee Briefs: Aug. 3, 2017.)

The RTO also defended its stance on excluding PJM as a signatory on the pro forma, contending that the agreement should be strictly between MISO and the market participant.

“While the agreement is between the market participant and MISO, the relevant RTOs will coordinate to ensure that the pseudo-tie is implemented safely and reliably and in a manner consistent with applicable regulatory requirements,” the RTO said.

MISO’s filing clarified that it will pull the plug on a pseudo-tie upon termination of an agreement or a lapse in firm transmission service without identical service replacement. The RTO also vowed that it worked with PJM to arrive at a practice of terminating new and existing pseudo-ties when a market-to-market flowgate is not within a 2% generator-to-load distribution factor within either MISO or a neighboring market. The RTO said it would revisit that value with PJM as needed.

Additionally, MISO told FERC that it does not intend to retain operational responsibility of a pseudo-tied resource, saying that the attaining balancing authority is responsible for the dispatch and operational control.

The mandatory agreement requires pseudo-tie owners to provide congestion, settlement, deployment and load data to MISO and maintain firm transmission service from the source to the sink for the life of the pseudo-tie. It also makes pseudo-ties subject to the approval of transmission providers and stipulates that pseudo-tie owners must register as the RTO’s market participants and provide six months’ notice to terminate the agreement.

MISO also retains “final authority to establish and enforce protocols” for any pseudo-ties and “make all final determinations whether to implement or terminate” them, according to the agreement. Additionally, the RTO can suspend the pseudo-tie if it determines that a pseudo-tie owner has failed to provide necessary data.

FERC staff’s measured approval of the pro forma comes after MISO asked FERC to convene a pseudo-tie technical conference to clear up several lingering issues industry-wide. (See MISO Asks FERC for Pseudo-Tie Technical Conference.)