KANSAS CITY — SPP has approved its seventh competitive project under FERC Order 1000, a 19-mile, 115-kV new transmission line with an estimated cost of $45.5 million. 

An independent industry expert panel (IEP) selected incumbent Southwest Power Service Co. as the project’s designated transmission owner. Invenergy, the only other bidder on the project, was designated as the alternate TO. 

The RTO’s Board of Directors approved both selections during its Aug. 5 quarterly meeting. The Members Committee provided a unanimous advisory vote, with seven abstentions. 

SPS submitted a bid of $21.1 million to build the line. Invenergy’s bid came in at $36.3 million. 

The IEP unanimously endorsed SPS as the designated TO. It found the utility’s bid would significantly lower the project’s lifetime cost ($21.8 million to $51.9 million) and that it was superior in identifying a construction and procurement plan. The panel gave SPS a 1,052.2 score, more than 200 points better than Invenergy (829.62), aided by incentive points awarded by SPP for meeting detailed project proposal requirements. 

“You’ll see a wide difference between points,” IEP Chair Tom Bozeman said as he shared the results with the board. “It was a relatively obvious, easy slam-dunk decision.” 

The IEP’s final report included a request that bidders improve the quality of their reports, a new addition from the panel.  

“The intention was to reinforce a well-organized quality proposal, because that’s what we’re looking at. That’s what we’re comparing,” Bozeman said. “It’s important for the bidders to have the information that’s requested and needed in their proposals because we’re not asking for additional information later.” 

SPP staff determined the Lynch-Medanos project would help maintain NERC compliance and allow the continued ability to serve SPS load in New Mexico with adequate voltage levels. It was approved in 2024 as part of the latest Integrated Transmission Planning assessment, resulting in a $7.65 billion portfolio. (See SPP Board Approves $7.65B ITP, Delays Contentious Issue.) 

The project has a Dec. 1, 2028, in-service date. 

1st Surplus+ Initiative Approved

The board approved a tariff revision (RR693) that would accelerate the addition of new generation by quickly adding shovel-ready incremental capacity at existing generating sites. The first Surplus+ initiative is among a suite of products that would end when the Consolidated Planning Process begins in 2026. (See related story, SPP Celebrates its Novel Consolidated Planning Process.) 

Under the proposal, priority requests would be queued higher than study clusters that haven’t started. The process would be conducted on an accelerated time frame, not subject to waiting for open seasons or processing as part of a cluster or from needs driven by other requests. 

Assuming FERC approval in October, the first requests would be submitted for a 90-day system-impact study, with the first generator-interconnection agreements issued by April 1, 2026. 

The Advanced Power Alliance appealed the tariff change to the board, asking it to reject three modifications made by the Markets and Operations Policy Committee in July: expanding eligibility to include facilities that retired in the past five years, assigning Surplus+ requests higher queue priority than requests in the 2024 studies, and removing key guardrails designed to limit facility expansion. 

As an alternative, the organization asked that the board either impose a one-time participation limit per existing facility or include an explicit sunset clause in the tariff filing. 

“This proposal is intended to serve as a short-term mechanism to facilitate modest incremental capacity additions, not provide an alternative path to interconnection long-term,” APA said in its comments. “The continued undermining of established processes to interconnect in SPP adds risk to developers who have a record of investing billions in the region.” 

In response, board member Stuart Solomon amended staff’s motion to include a direction that staff modify the language to make the process available once per generating facility or applicable retired generator before it is filed with FERC. 

“This is an innovative proposal that provides another tool for [load-responsible entities] to meet their resource adequacy requirements,” he said. 

Members endorsed the amended revision 15-5, with two abstentions. The APA, EDP Renewables, Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Pine Gate Renewables opposed the measure.  

The board also approved RR689, which addresses a market inefficiency that allowed participants to exploit electrically equivalent settlement location (EESLs) to acquire transmission congestion rights (TCRs) at no net cost, despite real congestion costs in the day-ahead market. The policy establishes a systematic review to detect and prevent manipulative TCR bidding behavior by denying portfolios with offsetting EESL path bids. 

Future suspicious activity will be flagged for monitoring and potential violations referred to the Market Monitoring Unit. The MMU supports the policy, calling it “manipulative behavior.” 

Nickell: ‘Have to Move Faster’

SPP CEO Lanny Nickell thanked the Strategic Planning Committee for putting together a task force, headed by board member Irene Dimitry, to review and improve the grid operator’s selection process for competitive projects.  

“Some of you have heard me lament over and over that I don’t like the fact that it takes so long to go through that process, particularly in today’s environment, when we need reliability faster than we’ve ever needed before,” he said. “Transmission is a big part of helping us improve our reliability.” 

Under the RTO’s transmission owner selection process, staff will solicit requests for proposals once a project has been approved by the board. Qualified participants have until June 30 of each year prior to the selection process to submit their applications.  

An independent panel of industry experts then reviews, ranks and scores proposals during a confidential process. The results are announced during board meetings. 

Tx Costs Exceeding Estimates

Noticing the consent agenda included approval of 11 transmission projects with costs outside the +/- 30% acceptable band, board member Solomon asked staff how deep its and the Project Cost Working Group’s analysis goes in making the determinations. He also asked whether staff have considered reasons for the cost increases. 

SPP’s Casey Cathey, vice president of engineering, said the PCWG looks at “each and every” out-of-band project and discusses the reasons for the new estimates with the project’s owner. 

“Staff also validates those reasons,” Cathey said. “There’s certain things that this staff doesn’t have privy to … so it depends on how deep you want to go, but we do validate each reason.” 

SPS’ 765-kV project was pulled off the consent agenda for a separate discussion. (See related story, SPP Board Sets Aside 765-kV Costs, Large Load Policy.) However, the Elm Creek-Tobias competitive project remained, despite a revised cost estimate of $291 million that almost doubles the original $148 projection. 

Staff said the discrepancy stems from an omission in the original estimate, which included only conceptual projections for the project’s non-competitive portion. SPP re-evaluated the project and determined it remains the most effective solution to address winter weather transfer needs between Nebraska and Kansas. 

The board approved the project, an 85-mile 345-kV transmission line on the western side of SPP’s footprint, in October 2024. The project includes four components: terminal upgrades at each end, a non-competitive segment and a competitive segment to be built. (See SPP Board Approves $7.65B ITP, Delays Contentious Issue.) 

The consent agenda also included: 

• • the 2026 Operating Plan, which serves as the foundation of the 2026 budget. The plan focuses on each business area within the RTO and aligns long-term strategy with 2026 initiatives. The Finance and Strategic Planning committees approved the plan during a joint meeting in July. 
  • nominations to the Strategic Planning Committee. (See “SPC Increases Membership,” SPP Strategic Planning Committee Briefs: July 17, 2025.) 
  • scope revisions to the Finance Committee, Strategic Planning Committee and the Future Grid Strategy Advisory Group.