MISO wants to exclude its intermittent class of resources from providing ramp capability by midyear.

The grid operator said last week that, in practice, dispatchable intermittent resources have not “assisted in ramping needs,” referring to wind generation that’s often trapped behind transmission congestion.

The RTO’s ramp capability product’s current design doesn’t account for a resource’s deliverability, staff said, adding that ensuring a deliverable ramp product will produce better price signals.

Senior Market Engineer Chuck Hansen said during a Market Subcommittee meeting Thursday that MISO wants to file with FERC in February to disqualify intermittent resources from ramp eligibility by June.  

Some stakeholders argued that wind can provide upward ramping and said MISO seems to be treating certain resource types unfairly because of system congestion.

Hansen said the action is prudent in today’s operating environment, but it doesn’t have to be a “forever change.” He said staff can revisit ramp eligibility as the fleet evolves.

In early December, Clean Grid Alliance’s Natalie McIntire pointed out that ramp-capable hybrid resources with storage capability currently are forced to register as dispatchable intermittent resources because MISO doesn’t yet have a hybrid resource market participation model.

MISO also wants to disable its downward ramp capability product by setting the product’s demand curve price to zero. The grid operator overwhelming needs up ramping, not down ramping.

Hansen said devaluing downward ramping is a “way of turning it off without throwing it away.”

“We’re not ready to remove it permanently,” he said. “But this is a way to disconnect the clutch, to use a metaphor.”

Hansen said staff will still track down ramping in its markets but won’t price it. He said from 2018 to 2022, MISO paid $542.80 in real-time payments for the downward product.

“It’s not that it has not been sending useful pricing signals. It’s really that it’s been sending no pricing signals,” Hansen said in December.

A MISO analysis showed that if it priced its downward ramp capability at zero, only 18 of 70,000 five-minute market settlement intervals would have been short on down ramp in the first eight months of 2022.

“We have an abundance of ability to ramp down. It’s physics; it’s always easier to ramp down,” Hansen said. “We don’t want to pay for something that’s inherent to the system.”