By Tom Kleckner

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — MISO said last week it is continuing discussions with SPP on one interregional project, despite earlier staff recommendations to not proceed.

In September, MISO staff said it would not recommend for approval any of the three potential joint projects evaluated by it and SPP. SPP staff has recommended one of the projects, the 11-mile South Shreveport-Wallace Lake 138-kV rebuild in northeastern Louisiana.

SPP said the project would have a benefit-cost ratio of 11.86, assuming MISO funded 80% of the cost. MISO said the same assumptions resulted in only a 0.86 B/C ratio, below the minimum threshold.

But Jennifer Curran, MISO’s vice president of system planning and seams coordination, told the System Planning Committee last week that the RTO might yet support the project if SPP picked up a bigger share of the cost. “We’re continuing discussions with SPP to see if there are alternative price allocations,” she said.

MISO’s Board of Directors will take up staff’s interregional recommendations during its December meeting.

Curran also said a second project considered in the interregional analyses, the Alto-Swartz 115-kV series reactor in West Texas, might have a “fair amount of value.” She said it will be taken into MISO’s regional study process.

Meanwhile, MISO Technical Advisor for Economic Studies Arash Ghodsian met with SPP’s Economic Studies Working Group last week to help the group better understand MISO’s interregional review process and this year’s results.

Ghodsian said the initial interregional study ended in June, and that MISO spent the next three months updating its modeling based on SPP and stakeholder feedback. While an interregional review found the three projects had benefit-to-cost (B/C) ratios of 1.22 or more, MISO decided against recommending any of the three when it reviewed its assumptions after a regional review found the B/C ratios for two of the three projects were under 1. (See “No Go for MISO-SPP Interregional Projects,” in MISO Planning Advisory Committee Briefs.)

Ghodsian said MISO and SPP “effectively collaborated” during the study and said the knowledge gained would improve the interregional planning process.

“We look at it as a great working relationship,” he said. “I don’t know the plans for the future, but we look forward to more interregional studies.”

Brett Hooton, SPP’s senior interregional coordinator, said both RTOs will compile stakeholder feedback on the process for discussion during the Dec. 2 Interregional Planning Stakeholder Advisory Committee.