By Tom Kleckner
Mountain West Transmission Group said Friday it has completed initial discussions about RTO membership with SPP’s management team and will begin public negotiations through its stakeholder process.
The conversations began shortly after Mountain West, a coalition of 10 utilities primarily serving Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska, announced its intentions in January to join SPP. In a press release, Mountain West said it had determined that membership in the RTO could reduce customer costs and make more efficient use of its members’ transmission and generation assets.
Negotiations have reached the point where “[we] believe it is now appropriate to take our potential membership proposal to all SPP stakeholders,” Steve Beuning, Xcel Energy’s director of market operations, said in a statement on behalf of Mountain West.
SPP COO Carl Monroe said he was pleased Mountain West’s members had decided to proceed into the RTO’s stakeholder process. The next steps will include stakeholder, board and regulatory approvals, and revisions to SPP’s governing documents and processes, he said.
This will “ensure the people, technology and procedures are in place to ensure a smooth transition to [SPP] and our wholesale electricity market,” Monroe said. “We look forward to continuing our work with [Mountain West] … and providing them and their customers the value our members in the east have received for many years.”
A 2016 Brattle Group study found Mountain West could save $53 million to $71 million annually through 2024 by participating in a day-ahead market and replacing its nine tariffs with one. The utilities’ desire to eliminate pancaked transmission and participate in a modern market design started the group’s dialogue about RTO membership.
Representatives from the two organizations will review their work and next steps with SPP’s 95 members. They expect a months-long process for stakeholders to approve changes necessary to add new members. SPP took the same steps when it added the Integrated System in 2015 and Nebraska utilities in 2009.
The meetings will be held Oct. 13 in Denver and Oct. 16 in Little Rock, Ark. Registration will be available on SPP’s website by Sept. 29.
Mountain West has said it hopes to present a recommendation to SPP’s Board of Directors in January. The organizations could file with FERC in mid-2018, with full integration as soon as late 2019.
The Colorado Public Utilities Commission, which has regulatory jurisdiction over some Mountain West participants, has held two public information sessions on the proposal. (See SPP, Peak Reliability Pitch RC Services for Mountain West.) A third meeting scheduled for Oct. 20 in Denver will focus on governance, transmission planning, cost allocation and regulatory filings.
Mountain West’s 10 utilities — Basin Electric Power Cooperative, based in Bismarck, N.D.; Black Hills Energy’s utilities in Colorado, South Dakota and Wyoming; Colorado Springs Utilities; Platte River Power Authority in Fort Collins, Colo.; Public Service Company of Colorado, an Xcel operating company based in Denver; Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, in Westminster, Colo.; and the Western Area Power Administration’s Loveland Area Projects and Colorado River Storage (CRSP) Project — serve about 6.4 million customers and own 16,000 miles of transmission.
“While Mountain West remains optimistic that an RTO would benefit its entire membership, each Mountain West participant will ultimately need to individually evaluate whether potential membership benefits its customers,” the group said. “Each will pursue regulatory or governing body approval, as applicable.”
