By Amanda Durish Cook

FERC has rejected a MISO plan to shorten the number of days allowed to customers negotiating a generator interconnection agreement during the interconnection queue process.

The commission on Thursday ruled that MISO did not provide “sufficient support” for Tariff revisions that would have required that GIAs be negotiated and executed within 90 days, down from the current 150 days (ER17-1728). Negotiation and execution represent the last steps in the RTO’s interconnection queue process, occurring after impact and feasibility studies have been completed.

FERC said MISO failed to demonstrate that the shorter agreement process would give interconnection customers sufficient time to sort out final details on new generation projects.

In its filing with FERC, MISO said that, after the commission’s January acceptance of a leaner 460-day interconnection queue (ER17-156), the RTO realized that it also must “proportionally” reduce the amount of time allotted to crafting and signing GIAs — or risk exceeding the new queue timeline by about two months.

“Without reducing this piece of the timeline, the [generator interconnection process] will last for 520 days instead of 460,” MISO claimed.

The RTO had sought approval to pare down all three queue stages, with negotiation cut from 60 days to 45; execution of a customer agreement reduced from 60 days to 30; and transmission owners given 15 days to sign off on an agreement instead of 30 days.

MISO had argued that the 460-day timeline approved by FERC “specifically contemplated a reduction in the [agreement] negotiation and execution timeline from 150 days to 90 days.”

The commission responded that a diagram proposing a general, 90-day agreement process was only attached to testimony in the queue reform changes, and not reflected in MISO’s Tariff changes. FERC also said its approval of the new queue process hinged on shortening the definitive planning phase of the queue — where restudies most often occur — and did not focus on altering the interconnection agreement process.

MISO’s filing framed the changes as “limited revisions … to improve and clarify the language implementing the commission’s recently approved interconnection queue reforms.” But FERC responded that the RTO’s characterization of the filing as merely a “cleanup” filing to reflect Tariff revisions was incorrect.

Several MISO members — including multiple wind developers — protested the shorter deadlines, arguing that the RTO was attempting to put the entire onus of a shorter queue on interconnection customers while making no sacrifices itself. Those members pointed out that they have already agreed to increased financial milestones and shorter time frames to review the results of system impact studies, and that MISO should now focus on shortening the timeline it gives itself to conduct studies during the definitive planning phase. The wind developers also said MISO is already failing to implement the more streamlined queue, with a backlog similar to that which dogged the old queue process now threatening the 2020 commercial operation deadline imposed on developers seeking the production tax credit.

Other members said the back-to-back 60-day negotiation and execution periods are crucial because that’s when facility costs are finalized and the companies obtain board approval of the project.

MISO last month told stakeholders to prepare for imminent delays while it studies an unprecedented influx of prospective projects that last year entered the queue. (See FERC Accepts MISO’s 2nd Try on Queue Reform.)

MISO also asked FERC for permission to give interconnection customers fewer days in which to modify their selected level of network resource interconnection service so that any change did not occur after the conclusion of the final system impact study. FERC did not address the proposed change in its decision to reject the RTO’s broader proposal.