MISO told the Market Subcommittee it will agree to a FERC order requiring it to post day-ahead market results at least 30 minutes before the 2 p.m. Eastern Prevailing Time gas timely nomination deadline. (See FERC Orders MISO to Shift Electric Schedule.)
However, MISO’s Kevin Larson said the compliance filing will include a rehearing request asking that its day-ahead schedule not adjust for daylight saving time.
Prevailing time reflects the shifts between standard time and daylight time, when clocks move ahead by one hour between the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in November.
“Our practice of using Eastern Standard Time dates back to 2006 because Indiana was an oddball state and didn’t use daylight savings,” Larson said.
A decade later, MISO says it can’t “quantify any benefits” in transitioning to daylight saving time and says the cost of the switch would be burdensome to market participants.
“Implementing semi-annual transitions to and from DST will result in significant impact and cost to MISO and our market participants,” MISO wrote in a presentation.
As proposed by MISO, the day-ahead clearing window will close at 10:30 a.m. with results published by 1:30 p.m. EPT.
It would maintain the 6 p.m. EPT Forward Reliability Assessment Commitment (FRAC) notification time and the one-hour FRAC rebid period. Because the RTO publishes FRAC results as available, it said the deadline has little impact on when market participants actually receive notification.
MISO to Begin SPP Settlement with $16 Million Payment
MISO is about to make a one-time, $16 million payment to SPP to cover excess flow charges over the past two years under the settlement the RTOs agreed to in October. (See SPP, MISO Reach Deal to End Transmission Dispute.)
Beginning in February, MISO will send SPP $1.33 million monthly to cover flows over 1,000 MW crossing MISO’s North-South interface. The monthly payments will continue until February 2017, when the monthly amounts will be based on prior year usage.
John Weissenborn, MISO’s director of market services, said a true-up between the payments and the actual north-south flows from February 2015 through the end of January will take place in June.
As an interim measure, MISO will collect the $1.33 million monthly from members through a miscellaneous charge based on market load ratio share (load and export schedule volumes).
MISO stakeholders are continuing settlement discussions to determine a final cost allocation mechanism (ER14-1736). “These miscellaneous charges will be used until cost allocation talks are finalized,” Weissenborn explained.
MSC Approves Charter, Management Plan
The Market Subcommittee approved without objection a charter nearly identical to last year’s. The committee also adopted its 2016 management plan, which lists the issues it expects to cover in its monthly meetings.
Chairman Kent Feliks described the plan as a “snapshot” of the group’s coming work, saying it would be subject to change. Among the issues included in the plan are an evaluation of the energy offer cap, implementing five-minute settlement calculations and coordinated transaction scheduling with PJM.
Demand Response Talks in Limbo
Stakeholders rejected a suggestion to table discussion of three initiatives regarding aggregation of demand response resources and lowering the 5-MW minimum participation threshold.
“The question was should they keep pushing the rock uphill… [The Demand Response Working Group] has been spinning their wheels on this for some time,” said Jeff Bladen, MISO’s executive director of market design.
Several stakeholders said the issues were still legitimate and deserved to be kept alive.
But with the working group slated for retirement under the RTO’s redesign, it is unclear when or where the issues will arise next.
Monitor Reports Quiet Fall Quarter
MISO’s fall quarter was defined by falling energy prices, said MISO Market Monitor David Patton of Potomac Economics in a quarterly report to the Market Subcommittee.
Patton reported a 40% reduction in natural gas prices at both the Chicago Hub and the Henry Hub, with the average price at less than $2.50/MMBtu during the quarter.
The average price of power in the footprint fell below $22/MWh in November. For the quarter, the real-time price was $24.96/MWh, 13% lower than the summer quarter and 27% lower in a year-over-year comparison.
“It wasn’t a particularly exciting quarter,” Patton said.
Patton also said his staff is still gathering information on the November Texas price spikes caused by congestion. (See MISO Monitor Auditing Tx Outages that Caused Price Spikes.)
The annual State of the Market Report, expected by April, will include an analysis of the effectiveness of extended locational marginal pricing (ELMP), Patton said.
— Amanda Durish Cook
