In the waning hours of his first full day as SPP’s CEO-in-waiting, Lanny Nickell was deep into a phone conversation with a reporter and laying out his plans for 2025.

He said his success, and that of SPP, will be based on its stakeholder driven approach with its members — in other words, its corporate culture.

“Culture is our secret sauce. That’s what’s allowed us to be successful, and that’s what’s going to allow us to be successful in the future,” Nickell said. “To me, our culture is the foundation upon which I plan to build pillars of ambitious strategy, high visibility and operational excellence.”

Told that sounded like an answer from his interview for the CEO’s job, Nickell said, “It was.”

Having nailed the interview, he now prepares to take over the reins full-time following a three-month transition period with his predecessor, Barbara Sugg, before facing the “enormity of the task ahead.” (See SPP Names COO Nickell to Replace Sugg as CEO.)

“I think we can do it in a way that presents a tremendous opportunity to provide a lot of value,” he said. “Continuing to work on this ‘grid of the future’ is a big goal for me. That goal includes enabling quicker connection of more generation and helping our members interconnect large loads that are seeking service in our footprint. We have to do this in a way that’s very quick and reliable, continuing the progress we’ve already made on improving resource adequacy.”

With its Grid of the Future initiative, SPP looks beyond normal planning horizons to determine what the future holds for the grid operator and its stakeholders, region and industry. An addendum to the RTO’s 2023 Grid of the Future report includes recommendations to address artificial intelligence, grid-enhancing technologies and the load of the future that will be incorporated into various working group plans in 2025 and beyond.

“The future of the electric grid is vitally important to our stakeholders, and this research sets the stage for the many discussions that will occur among stakeholders to prepare SPP to meet the needs of its members,” Sugg told stakeholders in December.

The author of both documents, the Future Grid Strategy Advisory Group, said the addendum is intended to capture the grid’s future needs as they continue to “evolve at a rapid pace.” The advisory group is collaborating with the Resource and Energy Adequacy Leadership (REAL) Team to host a Load of the Future Symposium March 3-4.

The REAL Team has been charged with assessing SPP’s current resource adequacy (RA) construct and “anticipated challenges resulting from resource mix changes, extreme weather impacts, increased demand and evolving consumer behaviors.” It plans to work with several stakeholder groups and state regulators in providing feedback on 2025’s loss-of-load expectation study and effective load-carrying capability, seasonal RA requirements analysis and the future resource mix/expected unserved energy study.

Nickell made it apparent he places a lot of importance on the REAL Team’s work when he told its members in December that “this is the right committee … resolving those challenges, because that’s where the majority of our challenges are.” (See “Nickell Looks Forward as CEO,” SPP Briefs: Week of Dec. 16, 2024.)

“We’ve done a lot of work in that regard. We have more to do, and we want to make sure that that we continue that focus,” Nickell told RTO Insider.

The challenges are daunting. SPP says excess generating capacity in its footprint is shrinking to “dangerously” low levels and it increasingly is dependent on more variable resources — including the nation’s largest wind generation fleet with more than 33 GW of installed capacity — as thermal generators retire. With large loads and electrification continuing to increase, the RTO says demand could increase by 25% before 2030.

Despite its members building $12.4 billion in transmission upgrades between 2006 and 2023 and another $3.5 billion of additional upgrades in progress, the grid operator says it still needs significant amounts of new generation and transmission.

Having streamlined the current generator interconnection queue — average study time has been reduced from seven years to four — SPP staff is reinventing it as an integrated part of the annual transmission planning process. SPP says that will result in a fairer sharing of upgrade costs, more financial certainty for developers, better transmission solutions, and more reliable and affordable energy sources.

Nickell called the consolidated planning process “a big deal” and said he wants to move it forward.

SPP also will move forward with its development of a new approach to allocating GI costs. It says requiring all GI customers to pay a fee contributing to the overall system transmission buildout will bring regional planning and interconnection studies together, making both processes more efficient and leading to a better system expansion.

That has bolstered SPP’s case for expanding its RTO footprint and standing up a day-ahead market offering in the Western Interconnection.

“Continuing our growth of SPP’s services and footprint is another high priority,” Nickell said. “Just to continue that progress in a way that’s as beneficial to current and future members.”

The expansion of its RTO footprint into the Rockies is proceeding in the background, as did the previous additions of Nebraska public power districts in 2009 and the Integrated System in 2015. A strike team of the seven western organizations interested in SPP membership is working with staff on joint operating agreements with the western RTO’s neighbors; a final version is expected by the end of 2025.

Potential Markets+ participants will open the year in January in Tempe, Ariz., where they will consider the remaining protocols that need to be approved as Phase 2 of the market’s development begins in earnest. SPP lists nearly three dozen entities participating in the work, many of which must agree to funding agreements for the second phase.

“There are many utilities in the West that really appreciate how we do what we do,” Nickell said. “They love our governance model and having a voice in the stakeholder process. They’re going to love the immense benefits they can get out of leveraging a diverse set of resources available in the Pacific Northwest, Desert Southwest and the current SPP market, as will our members.”

The Bonneville Power Administration, the big dog in the Pacific Northwest, has said that is the reason it is following through on its $25 million funding commitment to Markets+’ development, despite several studies that claim CAISO’s competing Extended Day-Ahead Market offers more benefits. BPA says it is following the wishes of its customers and preserving a choice between the two markets, literally mirroring remarks by SPP staffers who say they just want Western utilities to have a choice. (See BPA: Funding Markets+ Phase 2 Preserves Choice.)

The Pacific Northwest’s congressional delegation twice has sent letters to BPA saying the agency has failed to make a financial case for joining Markets+. (See BPA Has not Made ‘Business Case’ for Markets+, NW Senators Say.)

BPA plans to issue a draft decision on which market it will join in early March. That will open a public comment period, after which the agency will make its final decision in early May.

SPP also is waiting on word from FERC over its response to the commission’s deficiency letter. The grid operator filed its response in September, asking for an answer by Nov. 20. Arizona Corporation Commissioner Nick Myers told several of his fellow Western commissioners during a Dec. 20 conference call that after recent discussions with FERC staff, he believed a decision is imminent.