By Amanda Durish Cook

CARMEL, Ind. — MISO’s Independent Market Monitor urged the RTO and stakeholders Thursday to require that planning resources have firm transmission to ensure they can deliver their full installed capacity.

In its State of the Market report issued in June, the Monitor said that MISO’s deliverability requirements are too lenient because resources with energy resource interconnection service must only secure firm transmission for its unforced capacity values, which are about 5 to 10% less than their full installed capacity levels. (See 7 New Recommendations from MISO IMM.)

“It’s being relied on but it’s not deliverable,” Potomac Economics’ Michael Chiasson said during an Oct. 11 Resource Adequacy Subcommittee meeting. “It’s clear to us that the [loss-of-load-expectation] study is assuming resources will be deliverable to their installed capacity value.”

Chiasson said MISO’s current practice means as much as 1,400 MW procured in the 2018/19 Planning Resource Auction may not have been deliverable. He also acknowledged that some resource owners may have purchased more firm transmission service than MISO requires.

Chiasson said the rule change can be made with little economic impact to the PRA.

“The concern is more the potential reliability impacts, which could be serious,” Chiasson said.

While roughly half of the about 190 resources contributing to the possible shortfall impact 2 MW or less of capacity, 23 of the resources could each affect 20 MW or more.

Chiasson pointed out that MISO currently requires full deliverability for resources with network resource interconnection service, leading Consumers Energy’s Jeff Beattie to say the RTO was giving unequal treatment to the two groups of generators.

MISO Director of Resource Adequacy Coordination Laura Rauch said that the RTO generally agrees with the recommendation, which could result in a change to how it accredits capacity resources. The RTO is expected to formally respond to the State of the Market report by Oct. 17.

Some stakeholders said that the benefits of the more stringent requirement wouldn’t be significant enough to justify more spending on transmission rights.

But Chiasson said if planning resources decide not to pay for more transmission rights, MISO could simply disqualify the portion of their installed capacity that cannot be guaranteed deliverable.