MISO will give stakeholders an additional two months to question its plan for four seasonal capacity auctions with separate reserve margins and a capacity accreditation based on a generating unit’s performance during tight conditions.
Richard Doying, the RTO’s executive vice president of market and grid strategy, said Sept. 20 that staff will now file the proposal with FERC in late November or early December. The filing was originally scheduled to be made at the end of September.
“We do nonetheless realize the importance of moving on this quickly,” Doying told stakeholders during a special call. “We believe that two months will be adequate to address any questions you may have.”
Doying said the extra time will be used to make sure stakeholders fully understand all the elements of the proposal.
The Resource Adequacy Subcommittee voted earlier in September to pause the new capacity paradigm for a year. MISO leadership has said it would give stakeholders more time to debate the filing, but not enough that the delay would risk implementation in the 2023-24 planning year. (See MISO Backs Divisive Seasonal Capacity Design.)
Some stakeholders said MISO mischaracterized the vote as a simple ask for more time to comprehend the proposal, when members had made it clear they disagreed with the plan. MISO should have focused on researched validation for the proposal, they said.
Doying said he was fully aware MISO was not granting all the stakeholder asks that were on the ballot.
“We believe it would be unwise and risky to delay beyond the 2023-24 timeline. … I certainly will acknowledge and take full ownership that this does not grant everything that the stakeholders requested,” he said.
Multiple stakeholders said the grid operator has not addressed members’ discomfort with the proposal.
Cleco Cajun’s Tia Elliott said widespread acceptance of the proposal is unlikely given that staff only unveiled a final proposal in August.
“There are fundamental issues here that have not been addressed,” Power System Engineering’s Tom Butz said. He argued MISO doesn’t yet have a method to measure whether an auction’s season will be reliable.
“I am being very firm that there are fatal flaws with this that will not be helped by having a lower accreditation,” he added.
Travis Stewart with the Coalition of Midwest Power Producers also said stakeholders would like to see a study proving that the design will improve capacity supply.
Entergy’s Wyatt Ellertson said there’s too much uncertainty about the seasonal auctions’ impacts.
“I think if we have [cost of new entry] auction prices in multiple zones, that’s not going to help anyone,” he said, asking staff to devise some “guardrails” so members don’t suffer “enormous financial penalties.”
WPPI Energy’s Steve Leovy said MISO could have already filed its four-season auction had it isolated the accreditation for a separate filing. Members are generally on board with a four-season auction but have concerns with stricter accreditation, he said.
Doying said leadership may consider “transition mechanisms” that could help “smooth” the changeover to a new capacity construct. MISO will hold more talks on the plan over the next 60 days.
