CARMEL, IND. — Planning Advisory Committee members had plenty of questions last week as MISO officials presented their proposed scenarios for the 2016 Transmission Expansion Plan.
Stakeholders questioned fuel and generation price forecasts and assumptions about future penetration of renewable resources and the role of energy efficiency.
A stakeholder for EDF Renewable Energy questioned the assumptions on the costs of installing new wind capacity, challenging data from Lazard and the Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook that estimated current capital costs at $1,800 to about $2,000/kW.
“These costs seem extremely high,” he said. The real cost “is probably close to half these values.”
Jason Schmidt of Xcel Energy questioned why MISO planned to eliminate a future scenario that assumes an increase in state renewable portfolio standards. The proposed base case assumes only enough wind, solar and energy efficiency to meet state standards. “We just submitted a resource plan in which we doubled our wind [capacity] and achieve 10% solar by 2030,” Schmidt said.
Sean Brady, of wind trade group Wind on the Wires, said he shares Xcel’s concern about modeling of renewables. “It’s a departure from what we’ve done in the past,” he said.
MISO’s David Van Beek said “there wasn’t a lot of support” among stakeholders for significantly higher targets, particularly in MISO South, where Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas have no RPS.
MISO officials agreed to seek additional information from Bentek about the assumptions in its gas price forecasts.
Members also debated how to model age-related coal retirements.
The baseline assumes 12 GW of coal retirements by 2016 due to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), with another 14 to 20 GW resulting from the Clean Power Plan, depending on regional or sub-regional compliance.
Including the projected 3 to 12 GW of age-related coal retirements leaves all non-business-as-usual futures with high retirements. If age-related retirements are excluded “more balanced retirements can be studied,” MISO said.
Feedback on MISO’s proposed assumptions is due Feb. 11. The RTO will present its final proposals for assumptions and scenarios at the Feb. 18 PAC. The committee will take an advisory vote on the proposal via email or on a conference call after the 18th.
Order 1000 Interregional Compliance Filing
MISO said it expects to make a joint compliance filing with PJM in response to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s December order finding that they only partially complied with the requirements of Order 1000.
The commission ordered the RTOs to modify their cost allocation method for cross-border transmission projects and develop identical language in their Tariffs to describe their interregional transmission coordination procedures (ER13-1944). (See FERC Begins ‘Next Step’ on Order 1000: Interregional Filings.)
At the Regional Expansion Criteria and Benefits Task Force meeting Jan. 29, there was agreement that MISO will have joint stakeholder meetings with PJM to discuss the filing, MISO’s Jesse Moser said.
First Interconnection Request for Battery Storage
Xcel Energy’s Randall Oye, chair of the Interconnection Process Task Force, told PAC members that MISO has received its first interconnection request for battery storage and will work with stakeholders to develop a process for analyzing such requests.
In a meeting of the task force last month, Oye gave a briefing on how California is processing storage interconnections. CAISO received more than 2,000 MW of storage applications in its April 2014 study cycle in response to California law requiring 1,325 MW of storage in service by 2024, according to Oye’s presentation.
Change to Transmission Developer Prequalification Deadline
MISO has changed the deadline for transmission developers to provide the RTO audited financial statements as part of the prequalification process for Order 1000 competitions. The date was changed to May 31 from March 31 after some companies said the March date was too early based on their annual accounting schedules.
