With MISO still years away from allowing distributed energy resource (DER) aggregators to fully participate in its markets, the RTO hosted experts this week to discuss best practices in registering DERs and data sharing.
Voltus’ Emily Orvis said she thought it was valuable to talk about MISO’s current DER registration process even if the grid operator may be six years away from final compliance with FERC Order 2222.
The RTO has requested that the commission allow it to wait until nearly 2030 to introduce a wholesale participation model for DER aggregation. It said it first needs to replace its market platform before staff have the technological capability to comply with the order. (See MISO Stakeholders Protest RTO’s Order 2222 Implementation Timeline.)
Orvis said MISO should standardize its enrollment processes for demand response, emergency demand response, load-modifying resources and dual-enrolled resources.
“The fact that there are disparate registration processes has a cascading effect,” she told stakeholders during a MISO DER Task Force conference call Tuesday. Orvis said that market participants must sometimes email sensitive customer data for LMR and emergency demand response registrations; she recommended staff adopt a single web portal for DER enrollments.
“The future is in some ways already here. We cannot wait until 2029 or whenever 2222 compliance is to figure out a more secure and streamlined registration process,” Orvis said.
She said MISO should modify its registration process so it doesn’t reject entire aggregation enrollments if a single site’s data is incorrect or changes. “For example, if one small site of 100 in an aggregation changes [its load-serving entity], the entire aggregation loses eligibility,” Orvis said.
Creation Energy founder and CEO Chris Hickman said DERs will be more useful to the grid if better data sharing is in place. He said he has always assumed an entity would step up to create and manage a collaborative tool for DER data sharing. Eventually, he said, he realized it was up to his team to establish the nonprofit registry they debuted earlier this year.
When DERs trigger grid issues, it’s because they’re incorporated with little to no operational visibility and control, Hickman said. He said DERs integrated with utility or RTO visibility and control can solve issues like poor power factor and phase balance.
“Regions like Australia, Germany, Ireland, California and Texas that have high penetrations of DERs have experienced cascading outages … and have identified a registry as the key component to help resolve issues,” Hickman said.
He said the industry has an opportunity to collaborate on a data exchange source, his organization’s Collaborative Utility Solutions, that could save billions of dollars. The nonprofit is funded by utilities’ memberships based on their size and competitive aggregators who pay for the data services. DER owners or operators are responsible for registering their assets’ information.
RTOs, state regulatory commissions, equipment vendors and other industry members are eligible for free subscriptions. Hickman said he plans to keep the subscriptions free, saying that if charged, the entities would recover their costs through utilities or consumers, effectively charging the consumer twice for the registry.
Hickman said membership costs will drop as the enrollment grows and administrative costs are dispersed.
“The more members we attract, the lower the costs go,” Hickman said. He said the system aims to replicate the Electric Power Research Institute’s (EPRI) Common Information Model.
EPRI’s Tanguy Hubert said the MISO region could house a program similar to the United Kingdom’s Flexible Power Initiative, where some DERs provide grid services by adjusting their power imports or exports.
Hubert said most of the U.K.’s DER-provided flexibility services are contracted without an advance capacity reservation for unplanned conditions. Only a fraction of capacity is contracted for planned situations under firm reservations, he said.
