By Amanda Durish Cook

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — MISO’s Advisory Committee is considering creating a new miscellaneous sector in order to give its Environmental Sector a more singular voice.

The committee is weighing whether to spin off the “Other” contingent from the Environmental and Other Stakeholder Groups sector in response to member requests that entities with miscellaneous interests be separated from those with an environmental focus.

MISO came into existence with nine stakeholder sectors and added the Competitive Transmission Developer sector in 2014 after multiple developers joined the Environmental/Other sector, marking the only time a new sector has been added in the RTO’s 19-year history. The Transmission Owners Agreement stipulates that all entities must join a sector, which are used for Advisory Committee voting.

“We drew the short straw [to be a catch-all] for several reasons, I’m sure. It’s a form-over-function action here,” John Moore, senior attorney for the Sustainable FERC Project, said during an Advisory Committee meeting Wednesday.

“It could threaten the integrity of our sector if a raft of other entities show up,” Moore said, questioning the requirement that every MISO entity must identify with a sector.

“I think we were the place of last resort,” Clean Grid Alliance’s Beth Soholt said.

She said MISO could test having a standalone Environmental sector first without creating a new “other” sector to see whether other entities come forward “that don’t have a home.” It could then spin off a separate “other” sector if the need arises, she said.

The Environmental/Other sector currently contains 11 entities, all with an environmental bent. To create a new sector, the Advisory Committee must make a recommendation to be adopted by the Board of Directors, then filed with FERC.

Soholt said that over the course of MISO’s history, she’s seen a handful of companies that sought to join the Environmental/Other sector but were a bad fit.

“And keep in mind that I was 13 when I began with MISO,” she joked.

“The Environmental sector should be a sovereign sector. I think everyone can agree to that,” said Mark Volpe, representative for the Independent Power Producers and Exempt Wholesale Generators sector.

Chair Audrey Penner said the committee should approach the issue with a bigger picture in mind, pointing out that FERC has indicated it might examine RTO governance and transparency. The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy this month urged the commission to holistically review RTO and ISO governance rules. (See FERC Probed on RTO Governance, Market Issues.)

“I’m thinking about the Googles and Amazons here. Where do they fit? The writing is on the wall for some of these entities. They’re going to want to be part of the discussion,” Penner said.

Volpe suggested MISO might create a new sector for industrial entities.

“I think it’s incumbent upon us to be inclusive,” he said.

Volpe also suggested MISO create a list of all the entities that have approached sectors for entry but didn’t quite fit in. Multiple stakeholders said they had experience with an entity that was difficult to categorize in any one sector.

MISO Senior Director of Stakeholder Affairs and Communications Shawna Lake opened the item to written stakeholder feedback. Penner urged stakeholders to think through their recommendations carefully to avoid unintended consequences.

Meanwhile, MISO rolled out live stakeholder polling during the meeting. Stakeholders put the new feature to the test using the Poll Everywhere app on their smartphones to vote on what description furnished by sector representatives applied to which sector. Poll respondents were kept anonymous.

Lake said MISO would eventually use the technology in other stakeholder forums to collect opinions in real time.