By Michael Brooks

FERC last week approved several changes to MISO’s competitive transmission developer selection process under Order 1000, which the RTO says will greatly improve its efficiency.

The most substantial of these changes eliminates MISO’s facility-by-facility evaluation when considering a developer’s bid, allowing the RTO to evaluate the project as a whole (ER18-44). Previously, the RTO had to individually assess a project’s facilities, such as lines and substations, even if they were all part of the same project. MISO called this approach both “inefficient” and “analytically flawed.”

MISO will now evaluate mixed-facility projects (those consisting of both competitive lines and substations) using the following weights:

• 35% for cost and facility design quality;
• 30% for project implementation capabilities;
• 30% for operations, maintenance, repair and replacement capabilities; and
• 5% for MISO transmission planning process participation.

Previously, the RTO used separate weighting for lines and substations.

Developers Midcontinent MCN and LS Power protested the new weighting. Both said the cost and description criterion, though increased by 5% for both types of facilities, should have significantly greater weight.

FERC rejected this, saying it agreed with MISO “that providing greater weight (35%) for cost and reasonably descriptive facility design quality appropriately accounts for the evaluation criterion that MISO anticipates will result in the greatest challenges for these types of projects, which include different types of facilities.”

“Indeed, MISO’s proposal to provide greater weight for the cost and reasonably descriptive facility design quality evaluation criterion for mixed-facility projects is consistent with LS Power’s and Midcontinent MCN’s general view that this evaluation criteria should play a greater role in the competitive developer selection process,” the commission said.

Additionally, FERC accepted other noncontroversial changes to the selection process. One of these allows MISO to stagger its requests for proposals for competitive projects. The RTO had explained that, as its Board of Directors approves projects for bidding in packages, drafting RFPs for the projects at the same time created significant staffing crunches (ER18-41).

The commission also approved several revisions to MISO’s governing documents to update terms and definitions related to the competitive process, as well as to improve their clarity, grammar and formatting (ER18-39).