By Chris O’Malley
Faulted by some stakeholders for not approving cross-border transmission projects under terms of their joint operating agreement, MISO and PJM have identified what lower-voltage flowgate projects could be done quickly and cheaply on their own sides of the seam.
The RTOs have jointly identified more than two dozen flowgate projects that could relieve market-to-market congestion.
The list of upgrades includes at least 14 projects totaling more than $45 million on the PJM side and 12 totaling $59.5 million on the MISO side.
Eric Laverty, MISO’s director of sub-regional planning, told his RTO’s Planning Advisory Committee on March 18 that the projects were not identified as the result of complicated modeling but through simple analysis of congestion history during 2013 and 2014.
Flowgates that showed significant day-ahead and balancing congestion in 2013 and 2014, and M2M flowgates that caused auction revenue rights infeasibilities, were included. Solutions had to be completed and provide a payback on investment quickly. Greenfield projects were not considered.
“We didn’t run these through a full set of futures for market efficiency-type analysis,” Laverty said, sharing information from a recent PJM/MISO Interregional Planning Stakeholder Advisory Committee.
“Here’s the cost. Here’s what the congestion has been over the past couple years. Does this [upgrade] make sense?”
PJM engineers have been using production cost simulations to study issues on their side of the seam. Both RTOs modeled special transfer conditions, such as those resulting from high wind production and increased Michigan imports.
Smaller ‘Quick Hits’
Laverty said the upgrades didn’t amount to high-dollar projects, with the largest potential MISO project an $11.9 million upgrade at the Burnham-Sheffield 345-kV flowgate.
Also, “they’re not rising to a reliability project yet,” he said, but could grow more costly over time.
George Dawe, vice president of Duke-American Transmission Co., asked if the upgrades would be eligible for competitive solicitations if they were delayed and became reliability projects. Laverty said no. Later, referring to a potential southwest Michigan project, he added, “We don’t know yet.”
For now, PJM and MISO need “to get a pulse” of transmission owners to see if they have an appetite for making improvements. “It’s a matter of building the business case for these projects,” Laverty said.
These “quick hit” projects will be the subject of additional review at the April IPSAC meeting, with conclusions and recommendations likely in May.
The extent to which the projects improve conditions for utilities on the seams is yet to be seen.
Last December, Northern Indiana Public Service Co., a MISO member flanked by PJM in eastern Indiana and Illinois to the west, complained to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that the RTOs haven’t approved a single cross-border transmission upgrade project under the JOA (EL13-88). FERC ordered a technical conference on the issue.
Market Congestion Projects
MISO’s Planning Advisory Committee also received an update Wednesday on potential “high-benefits-to-cost” solutions involving 14 congested flowgates in four areas: southern Indiana, southern Illinois, northern Indiana/southeast Wisconsin and Iowa/Minnesota.
Seventeen transmission developers submitted 45 solutions, including 10 carried over from the 2014 market congestion planning study. Twelve of the 45 proposals passed the benefit-cost threshold.
The projects identified in southern Illinois and southern Indiana show particular promise as “those two areas have been hammered by congestion,” said Digaunto Chatterjee, senior manager of economic studies.
Chatterjee said MISO has been studying some areas of the grid “over and over and over” enough to know they stand out as particularly problematic.
“These are real problems with real market participants that have real pain,” he said.