Stakeholder committee chairs last week restored a MISO stakeholder governance group to manage matters related to the RTO’s stakeholder governance guide.
MISO’s Steering Committee, comprising stakeholder group heads, on Thursday approved the Stakeholder Governance Working Group’s (SGWG) charter that describes the group as an “open forum” for stakeholders to “oversee and manage” the RTO’s Stakeholder Governance Guide.
The guide lays out how the various committees, work groups and task forces are structured and how meetings should be conducted. The SGWG will conduct periodic reviews of the governance guide, address stakeholders’ suggestions to improve the stakeholder process and discuss concerns over meeting facilitation.
The working group will meet twice per year or as needed. Meetings are open to all interested stakeholders.
The SGWG was disbanded about seven years ago, leaving only members of MISO’s advisory and steering committees to propose and develop revisions to the governance guide. (See MISO Members Want to Revive Stakeholder Governance Group.)
MISO’s stakeholder relations group will request leadership nominations via email and schedule the first meeting later this month.
Reliability Subcommittee Chair Ray McCausland, with Ameren, proposed reviving the small stakeholder group last year and volunteered to chair it.
“I’m really excited to see this invigorated again,” said Steering Committee Vice Chair Sarah Freeman, who sits on the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission. “It’s great to see so many stakeholders interested in how we conduct our business at MISO.”
Xcel Energy’s Carolyn Wetterlin, vice chair of the Cost Allocation Working Group, said it was reassuring to have the stakeholder community’s “governance geeks” back on the job.
Freeman said she would like to see the SGWG tackle how the Advisory Committee can have more input into tariff change filings before MISO sends them to FERC.
“I think the governance process has suffered to some extent because of the stakeholders that can talk about it,” McCausland said, a reference to the years that only Advisory Committee and Steering Committee members could direct governance guide changes.
