By Amanda Durish Cook

MISO will roll out a new public website this winter and begin a $130 million project to replace its aging “monolithic” market platform with a new “modular” system.

The RTO is “off to a good start” to replacing the platform, Vice President of System Operations Todd Ramey said during a Nov. 28 conference call of the Board of Directors’ Technology Committee. MISO expects to spend $21.7 million on the project in 2018, one-sixth of the amount budgeted over the next seven years. (See MISO Makes Case for $130M Market Platform Upgrade.)

Executive Director of Market Design Jeff Bladen said MISO will provide quarterly project briefings to both the board and stakeholders, with the first one slated for a Dec. 5 meeting of the board’s Markets Committee. The RTO has already convened the chief information officers of some of its member companies for a nonpublic meeting to discuss project risks and timelines.

MISO Director Baljit Dail asked that the RTO’s next update identify key milestones in the platform replacement that could affect the overall project timeline if not met. MISO expects to begin migrating to the new system in 2020, keeping the current one in operation at least until 2021.

Bladen said MISO has met with the leaders of other RTOs that also use vendor General Electric to discuss how to ensure the company honors its delivery deadlines.

New Site Ready for Launch

MISO plans to launch its new external website next month, moving the current site to old.misoenergy.com, where it will remain available until early 2018 to ensure the RTO maintains its web presence if the new site fails.

“We’ll keep both sites running concurrently, at least for the first few months, then make a decision on the old site in the first quarter of 2018,” said Kacey George, MISO public relations specialist.

A beta version of MISO’s new website has been up since October at beta.misoenergy.org.