By Tom Kleckner
MISO and SPP last week concluded their first joint study process, saying the exercise was a valuable learning experience even though it failed to produce a single interregional project.
Meeting in Dallas on Dec. 2, the MISO-SPP Interregional Planning Stakeholder Advisory Committee (IPSAC) reviewed stakeholder feedback and its next steps after a year in which it considered and ultimately rejected 67 potential transmission upgrades. Under the current stakeholder-designed process, the two RTOs conduct a coordinated study that can last up to 18 months, followed by two separate regional analyses.
“The process itself did what [it] intended to do,” said David Kelley, SPP’s director of interregional relations. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t get any projects across the goal line. We have to find a way to get those done.”
Eric Thoms, MISO’s manager of planning coordination and strategy and Kelley’s counterpart on IPSAC, said the session was an opportunity to collaborate with stakeholders to improve the process “so we can set ourselves up for success next time.”
One of the sticking points is the so-called “triple hurdle,” created by necessary approvals from the joint-study process and each RTO’s board. SPP and MISO initially identified three congestion-relieving upgrades that would qualify as interregional projects, but SPP recommended moving forward with only one, an 11-mile, 138-kV rebuild between South Shreveport, La., and Wallace Lake.
MISO declined to pursue any of the three.
The RTO had said in October it may revisit its decision on the Shreveport-Wallace Lake project, but this week it said that it no longer intends to pursue the project. The project is described in MISO’s 2015 Transmission Expansion Plan, which will be submitted at Thursday’s MISO board meeting, but not listed among the approved projects in Appendix A.
Kip Fox, American Electric Power’s director of transmission strategy and grid development in the southwest, called the Louisiana project’s failure “very disheartening.” He said AEP will eventually rebuild the 11-mile segment as a reliability project for SPP, “even though it provides significant economic value to MISO South.”
“It’s the right thing to do for ratepayers along the seam, even though MISO will not provide financial support for the project in the MTEP15,” Fox said.
Among the suggestions stakeholders provided to IPSAC was the idea to include task teams with stakeholder representation in the process for “specific topics and detailed discussions.” However, the concept met with resistance over concerns it would create another level of approvals and diminish the IPSAC’s transparency efforts.
Stakeholders suggested eliminating the “triple hurdle” by creating an interregional evaluation process that does not require separate regional reviews. Another suggestion was a cyclical 18-month process that aligns with the RTOs’ transmission planning processes.
SPP is already working on changes to its transmission planning processes. (See “Work Continues on Transmission Planning Improvements” in SPP Markets and Operations Policy Committee Briefs.)
Both staffs agreed the interregional process had improved coordination between the two RTOs and increased the knowledge of each other’s regional processes and stakeholders.
Staff will update the MISO-SPP Coordinated System Plan to include a report on the regional reviews by year-end. The IPSAC will next meet in the first quarter of 2016, focusing on potential improvements to interregional procedures.
