Decreased load, strong wind output and declining gas prices in March translated into MISO’s lowest prices since 2009, according to the RTO.
Real-time and day-ahead energy prices averaged $19.85/MWh and $19.44/MWh, respectively, tumbling by more than 30% compared with last March.
“These are the lowest levels we’ve seen in about seven years,” said Shawn McFarlane, MISO’s executive director of strategy and enterprise risk management.
Load for the month peaked at 85 GW on March 1. Monthly average load declined by 9% from February and 5% from a year earlier.
Gas prices continued to fall, averaging $1.80/MMBtu for the month at Chicago Citygate and $1.67/MMBtu at Henry Hub. Gas-fired generation accounted for 31% of MISO generation, compared with 23% a year earlier.
Renewable energy output reached 4,186 GWh, nearly doubling the monthly target and exceeding MISO’s goals for the sixth straight month.
McFarlane said the “usual outbreak of severe weather in springtime” began as expected in March, with heavy rainfall in eastern Texas flooding some substations. The season also brought an expected increase in maintenance outages.
March’s generation queue status metric remained a point of concern due to restudies stemming from withdrawn projects.
“We’re still obviously using our current [queue] process until a [new] plan can pass muster,” McFarlane said. (See MISO Queue Changes on Hold Pending Technical Conference.)
MISO’s unit commitment efficiency metric was also in “concern/monitor” status for the month because of a March 22 incident in which a unit failed to shut down in time based on its minimum run time and economic commitment period.
MISO Could See Fewer Legal Filings in 2016
MISO’s volume of FERC filings this year is so far trending downward, Deputy General Counsel Eric Stephens said.
The RTO has made 147 filings year-to-date, he said last Tuesday.
“We’re thinking that may put us on pace to file 450 to 500 filings this year,” representing a significant decrease from the 584 filings made in 2015, Stephens said.
Stephens reminded stakeholders to submit feedback to the RTO on its planned “continuous improvement” Tariff filing, which will seek to clean up provisions related to competitive transmission development and the RTO’s selected developer agreement.
He said the filing contains mostly minor changes in wording, but it does include one substantive item: MISO is seeking FERC permission to extend from 30 days to 60 the time between board approval of the annual MISO Transmission Expansion Plan and requests for proposals for transmission projects. The RTO is targeting an early May filing date for the revisions.
— Amanda Durish Cook
