CARMEL, Ind. — Clean Grid Alliance is asking MISO to incorporate rules for HVDC into MISO’s energy and ancillary services markets.
“We think working out market participation rules for HVDC is timely and warranted,” Clean Grid Alliance Vice President of Transmission and Markets David Sapper told stakeholders at an Oct. 10 Market Subcommittee meeting.
Sapper said many expect that the companion portfolio to MISO’s second long-range transmission plan will include HVDC lines, necessitating MISO to think about market-dispatchable HVDC.
“The lack of rules is a hindrance to HVDC development, in particular MISO long-range transmission planning,” he said.
The Market Subcommittee adopted the issue through general consent at the meeting.
Sapper said HVDC lines can help quell system volatility, help deliver new resource types and improve efficiency across seams. He said HVDC-enabled resources shared between MISO zones versus from different grid operators could warrant unique rules.
“This could get complicated, but at least the HVDC technologies are well understood,” Sapper said, adding that MISO could create a task team or force to recommend participation plans in markets. He said the work might borrow from MISO’s existing participation plan on asynchronous resources.
Clean Grid Alliance’s ask continues a trend of MISO stakeholders asking the RTO to anticipate the contributions HVDC can make and how they could alter markets.
The Southern Renewable Energy Association approached MISO and stakeholders at the July Resource Adequacy Subcommittee, asking them to consider that HVDC lines can be a source of external capacity. The nonprofit said lines are capable of infusing faraway generation into MISO’s local resource zones and could alter auction clearing. (See Renewable Group Asks MISO Community to Consider HVDC Capacity.)
The subcommittee also ultimately took up the issue.