By Amanda Durish Cook

MISO is considering prohibiting resources on extended outages from participating in future Planning Resource Auctions or making changes to capture the risk of such outages in loss-of-load-expectation (LOLE) analyses.

Manager of Resource Adequacy John Harmon said MISO wants stakeholder feedback on whether resources on extended outage should be disqualified from PRA participation or if costs of possible  outages should be shared by revising modeling assumptions in the annual LOLE study that informs the RTO’s planning reserve margin. The changes would not affect PRA 5, the results of which are due to be released Friday.

Harmon told the April 12 Resource Adequacy Subcommittee meeting that MISO’s Tariff does not prohibit participation of generators on outage for “significant portions of the planning year.” Each year, up to 10 generators providing capacity go offline on outages lasting 90 days to a year, including the summer peak, although the outages are known before the PRA is conducted, Harmon said.

He also said the RTO currently offers an Attachment Y suspension notice for outages longer than 60 days, but use of the form is not mandatory.

MISO recommended stakeholders seek an immediate fix for the 2018/19 planning year and seek a long-term solution afterward.

Harmon asked stakeholders to respond by April 26 with the minimum outage length that should disqualify a resource from PRA participation. Harmon also asked if stakeholders thought generators should be penalized or made to procure replacement capacity if an outage occurs during the planning year. Currently, generators on outages forfeit only their capacity revenue for periods when they are unavailable.

Stakeholders at the meeting asked for evidence to back up the two options.

“I think MISO might be bringing this forward because there’s something they see that we don’t see,” said Consumers Energy’s Jeff Beattie. He asked the RTO to bring evidence back to illustrate the possible risk. Beattie said while he did not see a risk posed by extended outages in his Zone 7 for the next three years, “maybe there’s something else going on with seasonal outages in other parts of the footprint.” Beattie also said there is nothing wrong with dipping into operating reserves to make up for outages.

Ted Leffler of Indianapolis Power and Light asked how often MISO overestimated its seasonal peak in the past and said the RTO should examine both aspects when considering resource adequacy.

Harmon said the problem boils down to the fact that a resource that has completed its generation verification test and identified itself as available during the planning year and then experiences a catastrophic event can still participate in the capacity auction.

“And that’s the worst-case example. There’s a spectrum of events that could happen,” Harmon said.