CARMEL, Ind. — MISO said after its experience with its first long-range transmission portfolio, it no longer wants to open simple, conductor-only projects to its competitive bidding process.  

MISO competitive transmission lead Alex Monn said the amount of time and effort that went into opening some straightforward, long-range transmission plan (LRTP) lines to competition wasn’t worth the outcome. 

“Applying the competitive transmission process to projects that solely entail installing new conductor is costly and inefficient,” Monn said during a May 29 Planning Advisory Committee meeting.  

MISO evaluated five competitive transmission projects from the first cycle of its $10 billion long-range transmission plan. It said two rounds of competitive bidding were composed solely of installing new conductor on replaced transmission structures. For those, Monn said MISO developed requests for proposals and formally selected developers when only the incumbent transmission owners applied to string the lines in both cases. (See MISO Selects Ameren, Dairyland to Build 3rd and 4th LRTP Competitive Projects.) Neither project exceeded $25 million.  

MISO plans to make a FERC filing in July to designate the installations of conductor on already replaced transmission structures as upgrades, not projects eligible for bids. 

Currently, the applicability of MISO’s competitive process varies based on structure design. The RTO already considers work a mere upgrade when circuit needs to be strung on existing transmission structures that have spare positions available. However, it allows competitive bidding on the conductor portion of the job when transmission structures don’t have spare positions and need to be replaced to make space for new capacity. 

Monn said extending MISO’s upgrade definition to both scenarios and eliminating bidding would simplify its competitive transmission process.  

MISO hopes to implement the change in September. It’s collecting stakeholder reactions on its plan through mid-June.