MISO plans to revise its rules around commercial operation dates to allow interconnection customers to begin operating about a decade after they first enter the queue. 

MISO’s Brady Mann told stakeholders attending a Jan. 30 Interconnection Process Working Group that the RTO is considering working a few extra years into queue deadlines, recognizing that supply chain squeezes have impeded projects. 

That starts with MISO drafting rules specifying that interconnection customers must select a date up to five years on the horizon for their generation projects to reach commercial operation when entering the queue. After that, MISO said it will continue to employ a three-year extension of the original commercial operation date in generator interconnection agreements (GIAs). Additionally, the RTO will allow transmission owners the option to request an extra two-year extension of the in-service date during GIA negotiations. MISO’s current tariff language doesn’t allow transmission owners to request extensions to complete network upgrades for generation projects during negotiations. 

Finally, Mann said MISO will allow for 180 days between a generation project’s in-service date and the commercial operation date to account for delays transmission owners might encounter in constructing network upgrades.  

The new package of rules could be included in the MISO tariff and business practice manuals and could apply to projects that entered the queue beginning in 2020.  

Mann said MISO probably will rely on targeted FERC waivers of tariff provisions for the 2018 and 2019 cycle of queue projects that have been especially hard-hit by supply chain woes and stalled in coming online.   

MISO plans to make a tariff filing later this year after it weighs stakeholder opinions, which it solicited at the meeting. The RTO told stakeholders last year it would consider extending deadlines after EDP Renewables pointed out that generation developers increasingly are exceeding MISO’s allotted six-years-from-originally-planned commercial operation and having to turn to FERC for waivers. (See MISO Somewhat Open to COD Allowances in Interconnection Queue Rules.)  

Current MISO policy requires interconnection customers’ GIAs to contain a commercial operation date that’s within three years of the date originally requested in their queue applications. It also allows an up-to-three-year extension of the commercial operation date in initial GIAs after execution. When customers can’t meet either, MISO can terminate the GIA, causing generator developers to lose their place in line unless they can secure a waiver of their commercial operation dates from FERC.