SPP’s market-to-market (M2M) settlements with MISO exceeded $20 million in October for the second time in 12 months, staff told the Seams Advisory Group Wednesday.

The $20.59 million in settlements, which accrued in SPP’s favor, pushed the M2M payments due to SPP to $203.87 million since the grid operators began the process in March 2015.

Permanent and temporary flowgates were binding for more than 1,875 hours in October. Outages and power swings from nearby wind increased shadow prices. The grid operators exchange settlements for redispatch based on the non-monitoring RTO’s market flow in relation to firm-flow entitlements.

M2M settlements hit a record $51.49 million, in MISO’s favor, in February, thanks to February’s winter storm. Settlements have accrued to SPP during the eight months since February and for 23 of the last 25 months.

New SAG Members

The group welcomed new members Luke Haner of Omaha Public Power District and Brenda Prokop of ITC Great Plains to their first meeting.

The SAG still has three open seats that it plans to fill next year. With a membership normally dominated by transmission owners, the group hopes to diversify by targeting larger retail customers and generation developers when it seeks applications after Jan. 1.

Rate Pancaking Issues

The Seams Liaison Committee’s (SLC) Pancaking Working Group met briefly Wednesday to review survey results of stakeholders’ pancaking issues and its information request of SPP and MISO.

Only five of 20 respondents to the stakeholder survey said their companies have experienced a failed cross-seam transaction, transmission project or interconnection project because of rate pancaking issues. Twelve said rate pancaking is a factor when seeking long-term generation commitments and half said the same for siting or accessing generation in a particular location.

Stakeholders said reservations timing is not consistent between the RTOs. SPP charges for all use of its transmission system, including unreserved use, while MISO only bills for network services taken, not reserved, at the time of the monthly system peak. MISO bills for transmission service each month based on actual usage at the zonal coincident peak, but SPP uses a 12-month rolling average.

Point-to-point reservations across the seam | Organization of MISO States

The RTOs told the working group that 59 load-serving entities have transactions across the seam. MISO has three active point-to-point (PTP) service requests across the seam and SPP had 75 network service and PTP requests.

Marcus Hawkins, the Organization of MISO States’ executive director, said he has not yet sifted through all the data, leading to group to plan another meeting in January to take a deeper dive. The working group plans to present its findings to the SLC in February.