By Jason Fordney

CAISO last week proposed to eliminate from its Tariff an annual state transmission concept plan that it says is obsolete because of changes at the federal level.

The move has support from Southern California Edison and the California Office of Ratepayer Advocates (ORA).

CAISO has developed the Statewide Conceptual Plan each year since 2010 as part of its lead role in the California Transmission Planning Group (CTPG), the transmission owner and operator group once responsible for coordinating local and regional planning across the state under FERC Order 890.

But since the implementation of FERC Order 1000 — the federal process that supersedes the previous planning process — the CTPG is no longer operating, and utilities have generally stopped responding to CAISO’s conceptual plan.

“There is little if any value in the ISO alone developing the conceptual statewide plan, and it detracts limited ISO resources from focusing efforts on the extensive and important planning activities they must otherwise undertake,” CAISO said in its draft proposal.

The planning process under Order 1000 now covers regional and interregional planning, and the CTPG has not held a meeting in four years, has none scheduled and has no chairperson. The ISO Tariff still requires the grid operator to develop the plan to determine transmission requirements to meet reliability, economic and public policy needs.

SCE, the state’s second largest investor-owned utility, said it “concurs with the proposal’s conclusions and the recommendation to remove the Conceptual Statewide Plan from the California ISO Tariff.”

ORA agreed that the conceptual plan “no longer serves its intended purpose” but said the impact of eliminating the plan should be evaluated after the completion of the next interregional transmission planning process. It should be determined whether the revised process adequately incorporates California’s specific transmission needs into interregional plans, the agency said.

Order 1000 identified CAISO as a planning region with Pacific Gas and Electric, SCE and San Diego Gas & Electric as members. Other participants in the conceptual plan are now associated with WestConnect as a planning region.

“Absent the active participation of all statewide planning entities in developing a conceptual statewide plan, development of the plan amounts to little more than a unilateral ISO exercise,” CAISO said.

The ISO is asking that stakeholders submit comments on the final draft proposal by June 29.