By Amanda Durish Cook
MISO this week opened the floor to stakeholders’ ideas on transmission projects to relieve congestion in MISO South and near the SPP-MISO seam.
During a Dec. 18 South Subregional Planning Meeting, MISO Planning Manager Matt Ellis asked for stakeholder help in identifying project candidates for the South region as part of MISO’s annual Transmission Expansion Plan (MTEP) cycle. The MTEP 19 solution submission window will close March 1.
MISO has compiled a preliminary list of four congested flowgates with upgrade potential in and around MISO South and the MISO-SPP seam, though the RTO is telling stakeholders to expect lower congestion in 2019 and beyond.
MISO Economic Studies Engineer Karthik Munukutla said several top congested areas in MISO South have already been addressed with MTEP projects, coming online as early as this month and as late as mid-2023. Munukutla also said congestion will subside due to low energy demand and potential distributed resources further reducing those needs. However, he said some local resource zones expecting high renewable penetration may experience higher congestion.
MISO predicts future flowgate congestion at the Bullshoals-Midway Jordan 161-kV line near the Missouri border in northern Arkansas and the Fulton-Patmos 115-kV line in southwestern Arkansas. The RTO also predicts seams congestion around the Raun-Tekamah 161-kV line on the Iowa-Nebraska border and the Neosho-Riverton 161-kV line on the eastern Kansas-Nebraska border.
MISO officials said a complete list of MISO South and MISO-SPP issues and a formal request for ideas will be sent via email to stakeholders in early January.
Project ideas will be analyzed under the MTEP’s 2019 Market Congestion Planning Study (MCPS), the first such footprint-wide study since Entergy’s five-year transition period began in 2013. The transition period, which expires at the end of 2018, has limited the cost-sharing of transmission projects.
Going forward, the RTO will discontinue its practice of creating separate studies for MISO Midwest and MISO South, though the MCPS will continue to focus on subregional needs. In another first, the MCPS will also contain MISO-PJM and MISO-SPP congestion analyses that could produce an interregional congestion-relief project.
