By Amanda Durish Cook

CARMEL, Ind. — MISO has issued its annual survey asking stakeholders to rank possible market modifications the RTO should undertake as part of its Market Roadmap process.

The survey contains 34 proposals. Stakeholder results will be measured alongside staff weightings to rank what market projects the RTO will tackle first, Senior Manager of Market Strategy Mia Adams said.

This year, MISO is limiting stakeholders’ scoring to a maximum of four “high” and six “medium” priority designations, with an unlimited number of “low” and “do not pursue” designations.

“We limit this because if everything is a high priority, nothing is a high priority,” Adams said at a special June 8 Market Roadmap workshop. She also said the RTO has finite resources and time to work on simultaneous market changes.

Stakeholders have until July 13 to return their surveys.

This is also the first year that MISO will publicly post a matrix of projects’ scores, representing an attempt to increase transparency around which market changes are pursued. Stakeholders last year voiced disappointment at what they viewed as an opaque approach to project selection. Market projects were ultimately reordered late in the process to account for stakeholder preferences. (See MISO Projects Reordered Following Stakeholder Frustration.)

Executive Director of Market Design Jeff Bladen said projects won’t begin to be ordered until after the Independent Market Monitor releases its annual State of the Market Report. “The actual ranking and prioritization process is months in front of us,” Bladen said.

MISO plans to review the results in August and present a final prioritization in September.

At stakeholders’ request, Bladen said this will be the first year in which the Market Roadmap process will show the Monitor’s recommendations alongside those of the RTO and its participants.

Last month, the Steering Committee created a pair of new project candidates based on Monitor recommendations, improving shortage pricing by revising the operating reserve demand curve to reflect a higher value of lost load and changing the day-ahead margin assurance payment and real-time offer revenue sufficiency guarantee payment rules and performance incentives to reduce gaming. (See MISO Steering Committee OKs IMM Proposals for Market Roadmap.)

Minnesota Public Utilities Commission staffer Hwikwon Ham said it would be helpful for State of the Market Reports to be released earlier in the year to enable stakeholders to read the Monitor’s recommendations before ranking projects.

Monitor David Patton said his office worked to release some project recommendation descriptions earlier this year to meet MISO’s May deadline for submitting Market Roadmap candidates. Patton said in the future his staff will target an earlier publication of the report.

“We’re changing some of our processes on the State of the Market so it better coincides with the Market Roadmap,” Patton said. Adams also said MISO is open to shifting survey deadlines to give stakeholders time to review the reports before completing surveys.