A year after rolling out its extended LMP methodology, MISO plans to move into a second phase as it considers expanding online fast-start pricing to more peaking resources and investigating offline fast-start pricing.

MISO said it is considering using a 30-minute window instead of 10 minutes to summon fast-start resources. The change, according to MISO, could increase from 90 units contributing about 4,000 MW to 214 units contributing about 9,000 MW during summer peak capacity.

“Our intention is certainly not to raise prices, but to reflect the true price,” said Jeff Bladen, executive director of market services, told the Market Subcommittee last week. He said if unnecessary costs were hiding in the revenue sufficiency guarantee, including more resources would bring more transparency to ELMP.

“Phase II is meant to capture broader benefits,” MISO Market Design Engineer Congcong Wang said. “By expanding from 10 minutes to 30 minutes with fast-start resources, we would have the capacity almost doubled in terms of megawatts and units.”

Wang said studies on moving the fast-start window would be completed by August. MISO is targeting a FERC filing and new software testing for the first quarter of 2017.

Some stakeholders said it wasn’t reasonable to think fast-start resources would be able to commit to a five-minute interval and were afraid it would depress revenue sufficiency guarantee amounts. Others expressed concern that MISO would remain silent until August.

“This is not a proposal; it’s an investigation at this point. The purpose today is to let you know … we’re scoping out the project. We’re taking a lot of notes on what we’re hearing,” said Dhiman Chatterjee, MISO’s senior manager of market evaluation and design.

Chatterjee said MISO would provide stakeholders updates throughout the study process. He asked stakeholders to submit written questions and comments by March 15.

During the first six months of ELMP operations since last March, MISO said only about 40 units were enabled to set prices. MISO’s Independent Market Monitor said the number represented only about 1% of online peaking resources that were eligible to set prices.

MISO defines fast-start resources, which participate in price-setting, as those that can start within 10 minutes of notification and have a minimum run time of an hour or less.

So far, MISO said ELMP has resulted in “modest” benefits. Using ELMP has decreased uplift charges by 1%, a projected annual savings of more than $165,000. The RTO also said that the deviation between day-ahead and real-time prices was reduced by 2.25%.

More Info Sought from Load-Modifying Resources

Hoping to boost pricing accuracy during shortages, MISO will begin requiring market participants to identify the reductions each of their load-modifying resources will provide in an LMR event. The RTO is adding an additional form to its communications system to capture the data.

The other stages of MISO’s LMR reporting will be unaffected. Market participants will still use the system to report their daily LMR availability, with the RTO responding with scheduling instructions.

No date has been set for the change, but MISO hopes to have the additional reporting page active prior to the summer.

Jeff Knight of Entergy asked if participants could make changes on the form to select a different LMR to curtail without incurring additional charges. MISO Business Analyst Danielle Logsdon said market participants could make changes up to the hour before deployment.

“Just as baseball professionals are immersed in spring training for the upcoming season, this is preparation for emergency pricing implementation this summer, if it’s needed,” said Michael Robinson, MISO’s principal adviser of market design. “This is an effort to better set prices when we’re in these shortage conditions.”

Logsdon said MISO’s 2016 summer readiness training will be held April 14-May 19.

MISO Backs Make-Whole Fuel Payments

MISO has proposed reimbursing system support resources for unburned fuel when real-time schedules diverge from day-ahead schedules.

The RTO is also proposing that generation owners identify their fixed costs in filings with FERC. Currently, SSR units have to file directly with FERC only when MISO, the Monitor and the generation owner cannot negotiate a compensation agreement. MISO said having generation owners deal directly with FERC could reduce delays in implementing SSR agreements.

MISO said it “does not have independent information to evaluate SSR costs and relies on the generator owner for information on fixed cost compensation for the filing.”

Robinson said MISO would accept written comments until March 15. He said it is eyeing filing rule changes by the end of March.

Most Second-Tier Commercial Pricing Nodes Being Eliminated

MISO will terminate 28 second-tier commercial pricing nodes effective June 1. The changes will take effect with the 2016/17 financial transmission rights auction and the annual allocation process for auction revenue rights.

The RTO said it is jettisoning most of its second-tier interface commercial pricing nodes to “reduce administrative burden and be consistent with external balancing authority boundaries.”

“We reviewed these commercial pricing nodes and determined there is no business need for them,” said Zhaoxia Xie, MISO’s manager of modeling and market engineering.

MISO is evaluating the usefulness of six additional second-tier pricing nodes.

First-tier pricing nodes are associated with balancing authorities that are directly interconnected with MISO while second-tier nodes are not.

Illinois and Michigan Hub Definitions Changing

MISO is changing its Illinois and Michigan hub definitions as a result of the March 2016 model update, but the new descriptions are not expected to affect pricing substantially.

The Illinois and Michigan hubs will continue to have 151 and 265 elemental pricing nodes (EPNode), respectively. For both hubs, one EPNode was removed and replaced as a result of a substation closure.

For Illinois, the updated definition will reduce LMPs by less than a penny, according to MISO’s analysis, with average real-time prices expected to decrease from $25.13/MWh to about $25.12/MWh. In Michigan, the switch is projected to also amount to a penny reduction in day-ahead LMPs, from $25.91/MWh to $25.90/MWh.

Prices for MISO’s seven hubs are computed as the weighted average of the LMPs of the EPNodes comprising them.

Staff Considers Reusing Market Roadmap Information

MISO is considering reusing certain data in its Market Roadmap process to improve efficiency. The question of “prioritizing only new projects without reassessing existing projects” marked the beginning of the annual process at the MSC.

“What we’re looking for today is based on feedback we got at the tail-end of last year’s process. There were questions about the necessity of doing a full refresh of the Market Roadmap every year, where every item on the roadmap is looked at as it if were new or if we should only look at a subset of items,” Bladen said. For instance, Bladen said MISO’s roadmap could focus heavily on forward-looking projects beyond 2017 while using existing information for other projects.

MISO’s Mia Adams said the RTO was looking for feedback on the proposal by the end of the month.

— Amanda Durish Cook