FERC said Tuesday MISO can exclude certain transmission projects from competitive bidding eligibility, characterizing the change as a “reasonable adjustment to the MISO competitive transmission process.”

The commission said it was appropriate for MISO to assign projects to incumbent transmission owners when at least 80% of their total cost are upgrades to a TO’s existing facilities (ER22-1955).

The ruling will apply to associated upgrades in the four tranches of MISO’s long-range transmission plan (LRTP). MISO’s Board of Directors approved the first LRTP portfolio on Monday, the same day the order was considered effective. (See MISO Board Approves $10B in Long-range Tx Projects.)

MISO in May filed a request to change its competitive transmission process by skipping over competitive bidding’s “short segments and conductor only” work in its larger grid-expansion efforts.

FERC said the grid operator’s proposal is similar to that already approved for SPP. It said the exclusion will allow MISO to “better balance the expansion of competitive transmission opportunities with administrative efficiency, as well as to reduce uncertainty about which transmission projects are eligible for consideration pursuant to that process.”

MISO’s planning team has said some upgrade-heavy, smaller projects will be necessary to accommodate the long-range projects and are not suited for competition.

Some MISO stakeholders protested at FERC, saying the RTO should separate a project’s upgrade work from new transmission facilities, regardless of cost.

A MISO consumer alliance comprised of the Coalition of MISO Transmission Customers, the Resale Power Group of Iowa, the Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group, the Iowa Office of Consumer Advocate and the Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin said MISO failed to describe the impact the proposal would have on the LRTP portfolio, the process it plans to use to determine exempted upgrades and the associated cost consequences to consumers by precluding competition. The alliance pointed out that ratepayers tend to save about 15 to 20% in transmission costs when projects are competitively bid.

FERC held that a project upgrading an existing transmission facility doesn’t result in a new transmission facility.

Stakeholders earlier this year expressed displeasure that MISO filed for tariff changes to its competitive transmission rules without first consulting the stakeholder community. However, the commission accepted staff’s explanation that they discovered potential smaller, associated projects late in its LRTP development and filed quickly so as not to hold up the portfolio.

The grid operator’s TOs said the revision is necessary to “enable the efficient, timely processing of needed LRTP projects that MISO has identified and to avoid delays and other inefficiencies that would otherwise result.”