By Amanda Durish Cook

MISO and PJM will decide this spring whether to take another shot at a two-year coordinated system plan, which could result in the RTOs’ first large-scale interregional project.

The grid operators’ Joint RTO Planning Committee will make a decision by May 18 after discussing the issue at a March 30 meeting of the Interregional Planning Stakeholder Advisory Committee.

MISO and PJM staff last year already exchanged information on regional issues, market-to-market congestion, interconnection requests and newly approved projects near the RTOs’ seam. Those details should help the joint planning committee — comprising MISO and PJM planning staff — decide whether to pursue the study, MISO interregional adviser Adam Solomon said during a Jan. 12 IPSAC conference call.

The RTOs are calling on stakeholders to email a list of seams issues by Feb. 28 for the March IPSAC meeting. According to their joint operating agreement, the two grid operators then have 45 days to announce a decision on pursuing a plan.

The RTOs’ last coordinated system plan concluded in the fall without producing a viable interregional market efficiency project. One serious contender, a proposed 30-mile, 138-kV line near the Indiana-Illinois border, ultimately failed the joint 5% generation-to-load-distribution factor test, which requires each RTO to show that at least one of its generators has at least a 5% impact on the affected flowgate. (See MISO, PJM Reverse Support for Lone Interregional Tx Project.) Interregional market efficiency projects also must meet a 100-kV minimum voltage threshold and a 1.25-to-1 benefit-to-cost ratio based on each RTO’s expected share of the project’s total benefits.

Staff vowed to collaborate on ways to improve the coordinated system plan process after the study was concluded.

At EUCI’s Transmission Expansion in the Midwest conference in December, several stakeholders and panelists said that an effective wind transmission network in the Midwest will eventually require large-scale interregional projects. (See EUCI Panelists: Midwest Tx Plans Must Address Wind, Seams.)

Regardless of the outcome of the coordinated plan, the proposal window for interregional market efficiency projects — required under FERC Order 1000 — opens in November 2018. Stakeholders have until February 2019 to submit project suggestions.