The NYISO Operating Committee last week approved the class year 2021 (CY21) study report, triggering the 30-day period for generation developers to decide whether to accept or reject their cost allocations for needed transmission upgrades.

Stakeholders expressed some concern over the ISO’s anticipated CY21 schedule, specifically as it relates to whether the additional system deliverability upgrade (SDU) studies for projects will be complete by the 2023 class year’s (CY23) upcoming annual transmission baseline assessment (ATBA) lockdown.

The ATBA is the pre-existing baseline system, which is used to evaluate the addition of the CY projects and identify whether system upgrade facilities (SUFs) are necessary.

Certain stakeholders expressed that they were “unclear” about whether CY21 projects undergoing an additional SDU study would be included in subsequent class years or had “lost their opportunity to participate” in the next class year.

Mark Reeder, representing the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, gave a theoretical timeline of events, attempting to demonstrate how NYISO could not “know what your ATBA base case is if you lock it down” before all the additional SDU study projects in CY21 have accepted or rejected their cost allocations.

Thinh Nguyen, senior manager of interconnection projects, said that “if for some reason the additional SDU studies are not complete in time to join the subsequent class year,” then those projects will need to “pre-emptively request the ISO to join the subsequent class year.” The ISO will not automatically put CY21 projects undergoing an additional SDU study into CY23, and that “projects that don’t request” to be included in CY23 will see their additional SDU study “terminated” when the “subsequent ATBA is locked down.”

Developers who reject their project cost allocation will trigger additional decision rounds in which NYISO will issue a revised study within 14 calendar days that no longer includes those projects. Remaining developers will have an additional seven days to provide the ISO with notice of their election for the revised cost allocations.

This iterative process will continue until all remaining CY21 members accept or reject their cost allocations. Assuming it goes only one decision round, the ISO estimates CY21 ending on Dec. 2 and CY23 beginning on Jan. 3, 2023.