SPP members on Monday unanimously approved a revision request that will allow staff to complete an energy management system upgrade in a timely fashion and reduce project costs.

The Markets and Operations Policy Committee met briefly and virtually to approve the staff request. It still must be reviewed by the Reliability Compliance Advisory Group and the Operating Reliability Working Group after having already been endorsed by the Transmission and Regional Tariff working groups.

The revision request (RR524) updates Attachment C of SPP’s tariff to reflect revisions to the real-time response factor calculation process. The process is being updated to better align with industry best practices by using a standalone process and the Eastern Interconnection’s NERC interchange distribution calculator.

SPP COO Lanny Nickell said staff discovered late during the EMS upgrade that the tariff’s current requirements do not specify the use of certain software in the calculation. Their new language gives a “very detailed description,” as required by FERC, of SPP’s available flowgate capability calculations.

“We caught it late. Apologies for doing this,” Nickell said. “We would have loved to have covered this in October [during MOPC’s last meeting], but it was something we noticed late.”

SPP plans to file the tariff change with FERC in December, enough time to meet the new EMS cutover deadline of Feb. 21.