By Amanda Durish Cook

MISO has developed a revised approach for providing owners of financially struggling generators more flexibility, saying it will treat Attachment Y filings as suspension notices while allowing owners 18 months to make a final retirement decision.

MISO adviser Joe Reddoch said staff has drafted near-final Tariff language to align the RTO’s retirement and suspension process with the annual capacity auction.

In April, MISO said it would eliminate the temporary suspension provisions from its Attachment Y change of status rules in favor of a catch-all “economic shutdown” period. But some stakeholders said the move to a binary status for generators — on or off — might nudge some owners into prematurely retiring units. (See “Removal of Temporary Suspensions will Provide Generators Flexibility, RTO says,” MISO Planning Advisory Committee Briefs.)

With the revised language bringing the suspension concept back, retirement terminology would only come into play when generation owners waive their rescission rights or when the rescission period ends, giving asset owners time to decide, Reddoch said.

Under the proposal, all Attachment Y notices will be submitted as open-ended suspension requests without the estimated return date currently required by MISO. The temporary shutdowns would be limited to 18 months, with the RTO open to extending a suspension status to 30 months, aligned with the beginning of the planning year. MISO said that will allow an asset owner time to evaluate repairs in the case of a forced outage.

“By reorienting this process around suspensions, the process is a little more intuitive,” Reddoch said, adding that asset owners would no longer be forced to decide when submitting an Attachment Y notice if their units will suspend or retire.

Reddoch asked for stakeholder feedback by Sept. 1 and said he would return to review final Tariff language at the September PAC meeting. MISO plans a FERC filing in October or November, he said.