RAPID CITY, S.D. — The Transmission Planning Improvement Task Force’s recommendations to streamline SPP’s transmission planning process won unanimous approval from the Strategic Planning Committee and the Markets and Operations Policy Committee last week.

If the recommendations win final approval from the Board of Directors next week, SPP will combine the Integrated Transmission Planning (ITP) near-term and 10-year assessments and NERC transmission planning (TPL) assessments into a single 10-year study that will produce an annual transmission expansion plan addressing reliability, economic and policy needs.

The new process will begin in September 2017, with its first results unveiled in October 2019. SPP will complete the 2017 ITP10, the 2017 and 2018 ITPNTs and conduct TPL assessments during the transition period.

NextEra Energy Transmission’s Brian Gedrich, the task force’s chair, said the new process will yield more accurate and forward-looking results.

“It’s a holistic approach, the opposite of the sequential way we do it now,” Gedrich told the SPC. “A lot of manpower resources are spent to provide [transmission-planning] information for you and the board. This will free up time so folks can do analysis … that will actually be actionable.

“No one was happy with the process. Today, all you do is take a 10-year look ahead. How can you possible see what is happening in real time, when all you look out is 10 years?”

Gedrich said building the initial future cases would require two to four additional full-time equivalents and $350,000 to $400,000 in consulting costs, depending on whether staff analyzes two or three futures. The task force recommended two futures.

“What are we getting out of this additional cost?” asked SPP Director Harry Skilton, who chairs the RTO’s Finance Committee. “I hear you say more efficiencies, but what tangible benefits do members get?”

ITC Holdings’ Marguerite Wagner agreed the benefits can be difficult to quantify.

“We spend hundreds of millions of dollars on transmission, and we see congestion in the same areas,” she said. “We expect this new process to be more granular, thus leading to potentially better solutions and outcomes.”

“As you do the same thing over and over, I think you will gain efficiencies. Right now, as we start and stop, you lose a lot of time,” Gedrich said.

Skilton seemed satisfied with the responses. “If in the judgment of the membership it will get better results, address congestion in the near term and improve the planning process … that’s a helluva accomplishment,” he said.

The task force’s other recommendations included:

• Standardizing the ITP’s scope and developing a streamlined assumptions document;
• Developing a single, base reliability powerflow model that will be used for all planning processes;
• Adding accountability with mechanisms designed to promote timely data exchanges, reviews and approvals; and
• Limiting the initial 2019 study scope to two study futures to help facilitate the move to the new planning process.

Export Pricing Task Force Given the Go-Ahead

The committee unanimously accepted staff’s recommendation to create an export-pricing task force to research SPP’s Tariff and FERC policy and evaluate how best to take advantage of the RTO’s abundant variable energy resources.

The task force would make recommendations on establishing “equitable and nondiscriminatory” rates to address recovering incremental transmission and facility costs needed to export and import electricity, and “how to avoid paying for it on the back of SPP ratepayers — which will be difficult to do,” said Sam Loudenslager of SPP’s regulatory staff.

Loudenslager said the SPP region currently has 22,000 MW of variable resources in its queue and not yet in service.

SPP’s Corporate Governance Committee, which doesn’t meet until late August, will have to approve the task force’s formation.

Dogwood Energy’s Rob Janssen suggested the task force’s representation include members experienced with life on the seams.

“We have to remember we have members with loads on both sides of the border, who move power any given day or time,” he said.

“If you can’t get the money right, you can’t get anything done,” SPP Director Phyllis Bernard said. “This is one of those task forces focusing in on how to get the money right. There are genuine legal problems here, and absent federal direction, export pricing has to be the solution.”

Asked by SPC Chairman Mike Wise of Golden Spread Electric Cooperative whether the task force would develop a marketing campaign to “advertise our energy,” Loudenslager responded, “I’m not a marketing guy.”

– Tom Kleckner