MISO has four months to make two more filings to comply with Order 845, FERC ruled last week.

The commission’s order Thursday marks the second time MISO has been directed to refine its proposed compliance with Order 845, meant to increase the transparency and speed of generator interconnection processes. (See MISO Almost There on Order 845.)

This time, MISO must clear up language relating to surplus interconnection service and studies of projects’ technological advancements (ER19-1823-002, et al.).

FERC said MISO still hasn’t properly explained why it gave itself 60 days to decide whether to conduct additional studies when an interconnection customer seeks to include technological advancements in its project prior to an interconnection facilities study agreement. The commission prescribed 30 days to decide on new studies and told MISO in December to either justify the 60-day timeline or halve it.

In response, the RTO had proposed to “perform the required studies and communicate the results to the customer” within 30 days “after receipt of any additional data that MISO requires the interconnection customer to submit.” FERC’s latest ruling said that language could still allow MISO more than 30 days to decide whether a technological advancement to a project would constitute a material modification and warrant further study.

FERC also said MISO interchangeably used the titles “Surplus Interconnection Service Agreement” and “Surplus Interconnection Service Interconnection Agreement” in monitoring and consent agreements, which the RTO drafts to list the roles and responsibilities of a transmission owner and an interconnection customer seeking to interconnect through surplus interconnection service.

“We find that the proposed revisions create a lack of clarity that may cause confusion to interconnection customers,” the commission said, suggesting that MISO might avoid confusion by swapping the two terms with “Surplus Interconnection Facility’s Generator Interconnection Agreement.”

But FERC did accept MISO’s fuller description of how it determines which projects in its annual Transmission Expansion Plan are “contingent facilities.” Order 845 defines those facilities as a generation project’s unbuilt interconnection facilities and network upgrades that, if delayed or canceled, “could cause a need for restudies of the interconnection request or a reassessment of the interconnection facilities and/or network upgrades and/or costs and timing.”

FERC said MISO’s description of the impact criteria it uses in its distribution factor analysis fit the bill.

No Rehearing

The commission also denied the American Wind Energy Association’s rehearing request that it direct MISO to remove “barriers” preventing interconnection customers from exercising the option to build network upgrades.

AWEA contested the compliance filing’s inclusion of Tariff language describing a TO’s right to self-fund network upgrades for interconnection customers. FERC last year ordered MISO to reinstate TOs’ rights to self-fund the network upgrades, and the RTO requested an independent entity variation in its compliance filing to note the change, which the commission accepted. (See MISO Gauging Aftershocks of TO Self-fund Order.)

AWEA argued that “interconnection customers have had very little success exercising the option to build since the commission issued Order No. 2003 and that the commission, in Order No. 845, intended to restore that right.”

But FERC agreed with MISO that “not harmonizing a transmission owner’s right to self-fund with the expanded option to build could impermissibly undermine a transmission owner’s right to self-fund.” It said the RTO had no choice but to reconcile Order 845’s expanded option to build for interconnection customers with the TOs’ right to elect to provide initial funding for standalone network upgrades.