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November 5, 2024

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MISO Members See No Easy Fix for Making Transition Affordable

INDIANAPOLIS — At their quarterly meetup, MISO members largely agreed there won’t be an easy path to achieving decarbonization affordably for customers.

“We’ve gone from talking about rates, to talking about energy burden to now talking about energy wallet,” Sarah Freeman said, introducing members’ chosen topic, “Affordability, Sustainability and Reliability,” at a Sept. 18 meeting of MISO’s Advisory Committee.

“I really don’t think we’re prepared for what the transition is going to cost in the next five to 10 to 15 years,” said Michelle Bloodworth of coal advocate America’s Power. Bloodworth said customers of rural power cooperatives will be particularly hard hit.

Arkansas Public Service Commission consultant Keith Berry said affordability is a chief issue in MISO South, which he said contains some of the poorest residents in the nation. He said he worries what MISO’s third long-range transmission plan (LRTP) portfolio — which will focus on MISO South — may do to customer bills.

“We look with some trepidation on what the costs of Tranche 3 might be,” Barry said.

The Union of Concerned Scientists’ Sam Gomberg said MISO’s Environmental Sector views the three words as interconnected.

Sam Gomberg, Union of Concerned Scientists | © RTO Insider LLC 

“If electricity is cheap, but it’s fouling your waters and making our planet uninhabitable, then it’s not affordable,” Gomberg said.

Clean Grid Alliance’s David Sapper said to further all three, MISO should “unlock the queue without resorting to a queue cap,” finding ways to bring new resources online quickly.

“Resource expansion is the cornerstone of competition, so we need to get the queue moving,” Sapper said. He also said MISO’s transmission owners should use grid-enhancing technologies and dynamic line ratings to leverage the most they can from the existing system and host the greatest number of new megawatts.

Other members said some transmission projects will be better than others at delivering value.

Yvonne Cappel-Vickery, of the Alliance for Affordable Energy, said the industry should work to put a stop to inefficient transmission “overbuilds that starve the regional transmission planning process.”

Cappel-Vickery said some utilities “flock” to new power plants and expensive local lines that come “at the expense of bringing lower-cost resources” to their territories. She said the problem is particularly pronounced among utilities that own transmission and generation.

LS Power’s Sharon Segner also said comprehensive, regional planning needs to trump the local projects that are ubiquitous in MISO’s annual transmission planning.

Gomberg said members must ask themselves if they’re willing to bear near-term costs for long-term benefits.

“If we underbuild, we’re going to leave benefits on the table and risk affordability, sustainability and reliability,” he said, adding that regional transmission needs to be “smart and targeted.”

ITC’s Brian Drumm said there’s no substitute for transmission to achieve all three objectives. He said there’s current evidence that MISO and members have been underbuilding for years.

ITC’s Brian Drumm | © RTO Insider LLC 

Iowa Utilities Board Member Josh Byrnes agreed the system to date has been underbuilt.

Multiple stakeholders said bills are opaque and confusing for customers and said some efforts from the industry to help ratepayers understand what’s in their bill could go far.

Gomberg called for a greater commitment to transparency from utilities and MISO but added the simple fact is shareholder-beholden utilities exist to make money.

Gomberg said utilities may include “line items for things that they don’t want to pay for” in customer bills, “chip away at regulatory oversight” and approach state commissions with “inflated costs” in rate cases.

“That’s just the world we live in,” he said, qualifying that he wasn’t taking a shot at capitalism.

In a separate discussion on the state of MISO’s seams, Sustainable FERC Project’s Natalie McIntire said MISO ought to do more to build cross-border transmission.

“As the energy transition occurs and more and more renewables are added to the system and weather events get more extreme, the ability to share across our seams is going to be more important,” she said.

McIntire said MISO so far has provided “very little to no” insights into the scope of their recently announced interregional transfer capability studies with PJM and SPP.

On the other hand, the Coalition of Midwest Power Producers’ Travis Stewart said MISO might need to reevaluate “the amount that we lean on our neighbors.”

Stewart said with PJM anticipating supply shortfalls, MISO soon won’t be able to rely on the few gigawatts it receives daily from its eastern neighbor.

“Those megawatts are going away,” Stewart warned, saying MISO would be well-served by internally becoming resource and energy adequate so neighbors can begin to lean on MISO.

Vice President of System Planning Aubrey Johnson said seams projects might have been inhibited thus far because other RTOs haven’t been as interested in scenario-based long-range transmission planning as MISO has been.

“Ultimately, I do think there’s an attitude of ‘solve your own problems first,’” Johnson said. He added that MISO’s neighbors’ interest in interregional projects might grow after they approve their own major portfolios.

“I think Order 1920 is going to bring the other regions along,” Drumm agreed.

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July Sees New Western Peak Despite Moderate CAISO Demand

The Western Interconnection reached a record-breaking peak load July 10 despite relatively moderate demand in CAISO, the ISO said during a Sept. 18 meeting of its Market Performance and Planning Forum.

“When you look holistically across the West, it happens to be the warmest July on record, and that really drove the high loads in the Western Interconnection,” Guillermo Bautista Alderete, director of market analysis and forecasting at CAISO, said.

The Western grid’s peak reached 167,988 MW, slightly higher than the previous record in 2022. July saw many hours with high demand, Alderete said, and so the peak wasn’t necessarily an outlier for the month.

Despite record-breaking conditions across the West, temperatures in the CAISO system where the demand was concentrated were “not that extreme,” keeping ISO loads moderate, with a peak of about 45,000 MW — well below the historical peak of 52,000 MW.

“At the end of the day, it is not only how high the demand is, but also how well-equipped we are to handle that level of demand,” Alderete said.

‘Substantial Volumes of Exports’

Favorable resource adequacy conditions in CAISO helped support high loads in the West.

“We need to have enough resource adequacy capacity to be able to meet our actual load plus our reliability obligation. … When you put that obligation together and compare that against the resource adequacy capacity that we have available, you can see we were within a healthy margin,” Alderete said. “We were never even really close to hitting the resource adequacy showing level, and that means that the levels of demand that we have in the system were moderate enough that the resource adequacy capacity was sufficient to meet that obligation.”

CAISO experienced a marginal increase in RA capacity from 2023 to 2024, a trend the ISO expects will continue over time. Given the moderate levels of demand in the ISO’s balancing authority area in July, and even on the most critical days of July 23-25, RA capacity was enough to meet the load obligation.

CAISO’s prices increased as expected in July, reaching peaks on July 24. In June, average prices were typically below $50/MWh, while in July, they rose to $200/MWh for hours ending 7 and 8 p.m. Prices in the Pacific Northwest remained low compared with California and the Desert Southwest.

“Practically speaking, even those prices are moderate given all the conditions that we have when we look at the real-time,” Alderete said.

Import and export levels were close to historical norms as well. Most imports with self-schedules or bids at or below $0/MWh were cleared in both the day-ahead and real-time markets, though up to 640 MW of bid-in RA couldn’t clear given path derates on the Malin intertie because of the impact of the Park Fire.

CAISO cleared “substantial volumes of exports” in July due to conditions driven by record loads across the Western Interconnection, resulting in several days of net exports.

While the ISO had to reduce exports on very few days, its hour-ahead scheduling process on July 24 reduced up to 900 MW of exports.

The Western Energy Imbalance Market (WEIM) provided operational benefits and offset risk for members by facilitating assistance energy transfers (AETs), which allow a participating BA to receive energy when it does not meet the market’s resource sufficiency requirements ahead of a trading interval. Ten WEIM balancing areas opted into the AET program in July, the largest rate of participation since the program’s inception, Alderete said.

The ISO in July also identified three issues related to the Residual Unit Commitment (RUC) process and incorrect reporting of exports.

“I would say, in the grand scheme of things, they are relatively minor items, but we want to provide the transparency,” Alderete said.

On July 4, the RUC process triggered undersupply infeasibility — which indicates a potential supply shortage — without attempting to reduce low-priority exports to maintain supply, but the issue was fixed the following day.

The month also saw an incorrect reporting of export reductions in the customer portal that was fixed July 9, as well as an incorrect loss of high-priority status for certain exports. In particular, under different permutations of bidding in day-ahead and real-time markets, different bid validation rules triggered the unintended loss.

CAISO is assessing whether to revise the validation rules and has resolved all other issues, Alderete said.

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FERC to Consider Special Interconnection Rules for Tribal Energy Projects

WASHINGTON — FERC said it will work with federally recognized tribes on whether it needs to issue a new rulemaking to address their issues interconnecting renewable resources to the grid. 

The announcement at the commission’s Sept. 19 open meeting comes just over a month after the Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy filed a petition for an expedited rulemaking on the subject, arguing the few tribes able to build major generation projects face unique issues in hooking them up to the grid (RM24-9). 

“This will be the first time that the commission engages in tribal consultation on an electric markets issue,” FERC Chair Willie Phillips said at the meeting. “Improving the commission’s tribal engagement and consultation practices is one of my top priorities and a commitment that’s reflected in our equity action plan.” 

FERC is offering all its staff a training opportunity with Maranda Compton, an expert on tribal legal issues and a citizen of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, Phillips said. 

The alliance argued that some FERC standard rules, such as commercial-readiness deposit requirements and withdrawal penalties, do not make sense with its members’ projects. 

“Tribal projects that advance to the point of seeking interconnection are not speculative,” the tribes said. “They are not undertaken to take a big risk in hopes of making a big profit. They are not motivated to take advantage of fluctuations in the market. They are pursued to self-serve tribal needs for electricity to advance the goals of lower electricity rates, revenue for tribal governments, tribal economic development and tribal self-sufficiency.” 

Tribal lands are home to some of the best energy resources in the country, but on average, they pay some of the highest energy rates, with 56% paying more than double the national average, they said. 

“While tribal nations are eager — indeed, desperate — to change their economic predicament and energy circumstances, they find themselves stymied by unworkable and unduly burdensome rules that fail to account for tribal nations’ unique organizational structures and funding constraints,” they said. 

Building utility-scale generation projects can help redress tribal poverty and energy inequity through economic development, creating revenue and jobs, and promoting self-sufficiency, they wrote. They asked FERC to adopt limited and narrowly tailored commercial-readiness and withdrawal penalty rules that reflect their financial barriers, such as not being able to take out loans on land they hold in common among all their citizens. 

The issue also came up at the recent technical conference on interconnection, during which the Oceti Sakowin Power Authority’s general counsel, Jonathan Canis, described the difficulties in trying to get a major project connected to the grid. 

The power authority is jointly owned by seven Sioux tribes and is trying to build two wind farms in western South Dakota, which is a high-voltage transmission “desert,” Canis said. Interconnection studies would have the authority pay $250 million for the transmission on its own. 

“Of course, that made our projects economically infeasible,” Canis said. “To put it in perspective, our entire estimated budget for development and construction for two wind farms is $1.1 billion, so this increased our total project cost by 20 to 25%. We had to withdraw from the queue, and our projects are now on hold. We’re focused 100% on how to get back in there and how to make it affordable.” 

The authority worked with the Western Area Power Administration and Basin Electric Power Cooperative to develop a transmission solution, a 700-mile 345-kV project that would cross Sioux land. But only parts of it were picked by SPP for the regional transmission plan, and those do not touch tribal lands, Canis said. 

The Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office also has the funding for tribal energy projects, but that has never been used, outside of one commitment of $74 million for a solar microgrid to serve a big casino, Canis said. 

“We’re going to ask Congress to repurpose that fund to another DOE office that will really put that money to work,” Canis said. “And to put it in perspective, there’s only about five tribal development companies in the country, and there are not that many tribes with enough land area to develop their own wind farms. So, a fraction of that $20 billion could fix all our problems.” 

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WECC, Members Grapple with Strategic Vision

A proposed update to WECC’s long-term strategy has sparked a debate over whether the organization should describe itself as “The Voice of Reliability in the West.”

The phrase figures prominently in a draft of the long-term strategy, which was discussed by WECC’s Board of Directors on Sept. 17 and during its annual member meeting Sept. 18.

WECC decided to update the strategy in part because the Western Interconnection is changing “at a magnitude and pace that is unparallelled,” the draft document said. The current version of the strategy was adopted in 2020. (See WECC Board Approves New Chair, Long-term Strategy.)

“Even in the last year, new things are coming into focus,” General Counsel Jeff Droubay told the board. “Large loads, as an example, brought about by data centers, AI, crypto mining. We’re seeing these loads come online in an unprecedented way.”

The draft strategy lists five “impact areas” that largely are focused on reliability.

“Our holistic risk-based approach uses all the tools and skills available to deliver comprehensive risk mitigation strategies,” the document states under Impact Area 1.

But during the member meeting, some members questioned the strategy’s statement that WECC is “uniquely positioned to be The Voice of Reliability in the West.”

Pat O’Connell, chair of the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission, said the term “the voice” was “a little too heavy-handed.”

O’Connell noted that he’s deeply involved in reliability in New Mexico in his work as a regulator. And groups participating in the Western Resource Adequacy Program (WRAP) also are playing a role in reliability, he said.

“There is no one of us in charge of the whole thing,” O’Connell said.

Others at the meeting suggested alternative wording such as “a critical voice for reliability” or “a strong voice leading the pursuit of interconnection reliability.”

WECC member Grace Anderson from the California Energy Commission said the strategy should further emphasize WECC’s interconnection-wide work. She said reliability of the Western Interconnection is different from distribution reliability, for example.

During the board meeting, WECC board member Felicia Marcus said she likes that the strategy describes how WECC is viewed by others. For example, Impact Area 4 states that WECC’s “resource- and technology-neutral, interconnection-wide perspective is respected and trusted to assure decision-makers that they have an independent partner to rely on.”

But Anderson said the document left her unsure about WECC’s plan of action.

“To me, I think about a strategic plan, and it’s about what we’re going to do, how we’re going to prioritize,” Anderson said.

Responding to Anderson, Droubay said the plan is intended to work “hand-in-glove” with scorecards WECC uses to show whether initiatives are proceeding on schedule.

Another goal of WECC’s long-term strategy update is to align with a new strategy being developed by the ERO Enterprise, which consists of NERC and six regional entities including WECC.

The plan’s first area of focus is using “a broad range of data, tools and approaches” to address existing risks and prepare for emerging and unknown risks to the grid.

Other focus areas are maintaining cyber- and physical security programs; promoting stakeholder engagement; and performing as an “effective and efficient team.”

During the Sept. 17 meeting, WECC’s board voted to endorse the ERO Enterprise Long-term Strategy. NERC’s board is expected to vote on the strategy in December.

As for its own long-term strategy, WECC will accept feedback on the draft document through October. A final version of the document is expected to go to the WECC board for approval in December.

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FERC Proposes Further Cybersecurity Measures

FERC on Sept. 19 indicated its approval of NERC’s new reliability standard requiring utilities to implement internal network security monitoring (INSM) on some grid-connected cyber assets, while also floating the prospect of new standards aimed at securing the supply chain of critical electronic components. 

The commission issued two Notices of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPRs) at its monthly open meeting. The first indicated its plan to approve CIP-015-1 (Cybersecurity — INSM), which NERC submitted to FERC in June (RM24-7). It would require utilities to implement INSM at all high-impact grid-connected cyber systems, as well as medium-impact systems with external routable connectivity (ERC). (See NERC Submits INSM Standard for FERC Approval.) 

FERC ordered NERC to develop requirements for INSM last year, calling the proposal a necessary response to events like the SolarWinds hack of 2020. In that attack, malicious actors — later identified by U.S. law enforcement as belonging to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service — infiltrated the update channel for SolarWinds’ Orion network management software and pushed code to customers that the attackers could use to gain access to their systems. 

Commission staff said last year the compromise demonstrated a weakness of the kind of cybersecurity measures mandated in NERC’s Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) standards, which require a utility to monitor communications from the inside of its electronic security perimeter (ESP) — the electronic border around its internal network — to the outside. INSM could help security staff discover and respond to an attacker that already had infiltrated the system and did not need to communicate with external attackers, they said. 

CIP-015-1 would require registered entities to “implement one or more documented process(es) for [INSM] of networks … of high-impact [grid] cyber systems and medium-impact … systems with” ERC. Documented processes under the standard must include: 

    • network data feeds to monitor network activity, including connections, devices and network communications;
    • at least one method to detect anomalous network activity using the network data feeds; and
    • at least one method to evaluate anomalous activity to determine what additional action is needed. 

Entities also would have to implement documented processes to retain INSM data associated with anomalous network activity and to protect all data gathered or retained to prevent unauthorized deletion or modification. 

FERC’s NOPR proposed to accept CIP-015-1 but also described the standard in its current form as “not … fully responsive to the commission’s directive in Order 887 to implement INSM for the ‘CIP-networked environment.’” The commission specifically warned that the standard is not sufficient to “defend against attacks that circumvent network perimeter-based security controls.”

FERC said it’s concerned attackers may be able to compromise systems external to a utility’s ESP, such as electronic access control and monitoring systems (EACMS) or physical access control systems (PACS), and then use that control to establish access within the perimeter as a trusted communication. 

To address this potential shortcoming, the commission proposed approving CIP-015-1 while directing NERC to develop additional modifications to the standard “that would extend INSM to include EACMS and PACS outside the” ESP. The ERO would need to submit the revised standard to the commission within 12 months of the effective date of FERC’s final rule. Comment on “all aspects of this proposal” is due to FERC 60 days after the NOPR’s publication in the Federal Register. 

New Supply Chain Standards Proposed

FERC’s other NOPR proposed to direct NERC to address perceived gaps in the ERO’s standards concerning supply chain risk management (SCRM) (RM24-4). SCRM provisions are found in three existing standards: 

    • CIP-005-7 — Cybersecurity — electronic security perimeter(s); 
    • CIP-010-4 — Cybersecurity — configuration change management and vulnerability assessments; and 
    • CIP-013-2 — Cybersecurity — supply chain risk management. 

“Although the currently effective SCRM reliability standards provide a baseline of protection against supply chain threats, there are increasing opportunities for attacks posed by the global supply chain,” FERC said in its NOPR. “Using the global supply chain, adversaries have inserted counterfeit and malicious software, tampered with hardware and enabled remote access.” 

The gaps the commission identified in NERC’s standards relate to the sufficiency of entities’ SCRM plans as concern the identification, assessment and response to supply chain risks, as well as the applicability of the current standards to protected cyber assets. FERC said the current standards do not specify when and how entities should identify and assess supply chain risks; they also do not require entities to respond to supply chain risks through their SCRM plans. 

These gaps have led to “multiple gaps in SCRM” observed by FERC staff during their audits of responsible entities’ CIP compliance in fiscal 2023. (See FERC Report Identifies CIP Audit Lessons Learned.) Staff identified multiple SCRM-related security risks among the seven audited entities, most notably a “lack of consistency and effectiveness in SCRM plans for evaluating vendors and their supplied equipment and software.” Auditors also said many entities’ SCRM plans did not have procedures for responding to identified risks. 

FERC’s NOPR would have NERC submit new or modified standards establishing specific timing for entities to evaluate vendors and equipment to identify supply chain risks, along with periodic assessments of risks associated with vendors, products and services. The standards also would have to require entities to ensure their SCRM plans have steps to validate the accuracy and completeness of information received from vendors during the procurement process, and a process to document, track and respond to identified supply chain risks. 

As with the INSM proposal, the commission invited interested parties to submit comments on its intended actions. Comments are due 60 days after the NOPR’s publication in the Federal Register. 

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Markets+ ‘Equitable’ Solution to Seams Issues, Backers Say

Proponents of SPP’s Markets+ contend in their latest “issue alert” published Sept. 18 that the framework provides a much more equitable solution to tackling market seams than does CAISO’s Extended Day-Ahead Market (EDAM). 

In an email to RTO Insider, Jeff Spires, director of power at Powerex, said seams in the West have “resulted in inequitable outcomes, shifting value and reliability risk between subregions, and these outcomes are largely not captured in available studies to date.” (See SPP Briefs: Week of Nov. 7, 2022.) 

It’s a point that Powerex — the first and, so far, only entity to tentatively commit to joining Markets+ — has broached before. In March, the Canada-based energy trader issued a report criticizing CAISO’s operational practices in the Western Energy Imbalance Market (WEIM) during the January 2024 cold snap in the Northwest. The report argued CAISO’s processes unjustifiably limited energy transfers into the region during the weather event and squeezed wholesale electricity price spreads between the Northwest and Southwest through congestion charges at the ISO’s border with Oregon, benefiting California parties at the expense of those in the Northwest. (See Powerex Report Expands NW Cold Snap Debate.)  

Reiterating the points in the issue alert, Spires added that Markets+ “creates the opportunity for more equitable outcomes by leveraging its independent governance, its impartial operator and SPP’s demonstrated ability to negotiate seams agreements on a peer-to-peer basis with neighboring markets.”

The alert is the fourth published in a series of seven notices intended to highlight Markets+’s purported advantages over CAISO’s Extended Day-Ahead Market (EDAM) and WEIM. The first covered differences between how the two markets would be governed, the second focused on reliability, and the third compared pricing practices. 

The contributing parties include Arizona Public Service, Chelan County Public Utility District (PUD), Grant County PUD, Powerex, Public Service Co. of Colorado, Salt River Project, Snohomish PUD, Tacoma Power, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, and Tucson Electric Power. 

In the recent alert, the backers argue that Markets+ is a neutral market operator and can, therefore, resolve seams issues between adjacent balancing authority areas and adjacent transmission service providers (TSPs) more equitably than CAISO’s EDAM. 

“For entities outside California, joining EDAM would mean accepting that their BA-to-BA and TSP-to-TSP seams will be resolved by market rules developed by the CAISO under its governance framework, and implemented by a market operator that is also one of the participating BAs and one of the participating TSPs,” the alert said. 

Additionally, allowing CAISO to set the rules could lead to the California load receiving priority over other regions during heat waves, according to the alert. The parties also argued that CAISO’s market rules have led to concerns over inequitable distribution of congestion value, a point emphasized in Powerex’s March report. 

Instead of relying exclusively on CAISO to resolve seams issues, the entrance of Markets+ will lead to each market operator attempting to ensure “that its participants receive the fair value of trade at each applicable seam, including through seams agreements negotiated between these peer market operators, as is the practice today between adjacent organized markets in the Eastern Interconnection,” according to the alert. 

Trade across seams also is enhanced under Markets+ because it removes trade barriers and uses a flow-based dispatch, which will “facilitate greater reliability and economic benefits relative to today by enabling more transfers across the same transmission infrastructure, including across BA-to-BA and TSP-to-TSP seams,” according to the alert. 

‘Equitable and Efficient’

In response to the issue alert, CAISO spokesperson Anne Gonzales told RTO Insider the ISO remains focused on “implementing EDAM in a manner that best meets the needs of the region’s diverse interests.” 

“We continue to work with our partners to advance the Western energy markets, including the equitable and efficient management of seams with neighboring areas — whether in organized markets or not — and to grow its footprint to deliver maximum reliability, economic and environmental benefits to customers West-wide,” Gonzales said. 

In its own March report on the January cold snap, CAISO contested the negative characterization of how it managed flows across its seam with the Northwest during the deep freeze, contending that the event mostly demonstrated the value of the WEIM under stressed grid conditions, while the associated congestion charges reflected the functioning of mechanisms seen in any organized electricity market. (See NW Freeze Response Shows WEIM Value, CAISO Report Says.)  

The prospect of seams has been an especially fraught issue in the competition between Markets+ and EDAM.  

EDAM’s key supporters, who champion the cause of a single electricity market in the West that pointedly includes California, have warned that a divided West will prevent the region from realizing the full “diversity benefit” of resources across its broad footprint and could increase future reliability risks.  

On the other hand, Markets+ backers have played down any risks associated with seams. During a May workshop, Bonneville Power Administration officials noted the agency has deep experience dealing with market seams and made clear that seams concerns would not dictate its choice. (See Seams Concerns Won’t Drive Day-ahead Market Decision, BPA Says.) 

For its part, SPP has said it is prepared to take a leadership role in managing Western seams based on its own experience developing seams policies with markets neighboring its RTO in the Eastern Interconnection — a point reprised in the Sept. 18 alert. (See SPP’s Experience with Seams Could Help Markets+.) 

Robert Mullin contributed to this article. 

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8th Circuit Denies Review of FERC Orders on SPP Attachment Z2

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Sept. 16 denied review petitions by several SPP members over FERC’s rejection of generators’ rehearing requests seeking compensation under tariff Attachment Z2.

The court said it found “no error” in FERC’s 2022 decisions and rejected the petitions filed by EDF Renewables, Enel Green Power, NextEra Energy Resources and Southern Power (23-1520, et al.).

At issue is Attachment Z2 of the SPP tariff, under which transmission upgrade sponsors receive credits from any upgrade users whose service could not be provided “but for” the upgrade. The attachment also requires the RTO to invoice the charges monthly and to make any adjustments within one year. Because of software problems, it took SPP eight years to implement the attachment before 2016, during which the RTO did not invoice for the upgrade charges.

FERC found in four separate orders that SPP had violated the filed-rate doctrine, its tariff and its contracts with three of the four generators. However, the commission declined to grant a remedy, citing the one-year limitation on adjusting bills for customers. It also noted that SPP is a nonprofit entity with no independent funds to cover requested remedies.

The 8th Circuit concluded that although Attachment Z2 — and its requirement for upgrade credits — is part of the filed rate, FERC did not violate the filed-rate doctrine by not granting credits to the generators. The court said Attachment Z2 does not conflict with the billing requirements of the tariff and found that it “sets out the arrangement for sharing upgrade costs” but is silent on the timing of billing for upgrade charges.

“The commission thus had only one choice regarding [SPP’s] customers: adhere to [the tariff] and the filed-rate doctrine,” the court wrote.

The generators also contended that FERC failed to adequately explain whether its decision was based on a lack of authority or an exercise of equitable discretion, but the 8th Circuit disagreed, saying the commission “articulated a satisfactory explanation for its orders.”

And “in any event, any error in failing to explain would be harmless here, because the agency was required by law to decline the requested remedies, and a remand would be unnecessary,” it concluded.

A similar request by other SPP members was denied in 2023 by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said it lacked jurisdiction to consider the utilities’ filed-rate doctrine argument because they failed to exhaust it at the rehearing stage. (See Appeals Court Denies Review of SPP Z2 Charges.)

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DC Circuit Orders Could Lead FERC to Rethink its Natural Gas Policies

WASHINGTON — A pair of recent appeals court decisions signal a shift in how the courts view FERC’s approvals of natural gas infrastructure and has the commission considering its next steps, Chair Willie Phillips said at its open meeting Sept. 19.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision in late July vacating FERC’s approval of Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Co.’s Regional Energy Access (REA) Expansion Project to bring gas from Pennsylvania to New Jersey. (See DC Circuit Vacates Pipeline Approval FERC Issued over NJ’s Objections.)

About a week later, the court vacated FERC’s approval of two LNG export facilities planned to be built near each other on Texas’ Gulf Coast. (See DC Circuit Vacates FERC Approval of Two LNG Facilities in Texas.)

Transco has asked for rehearing on its pipeline certificate and also has filed for a temporary, emergency certificate so it can keep operating the REA pipeline after the court’s mandate is issued, which could happen as early as Sept. 20.

“While I’m not going to prejudge what we will say in that particular proceeding, I want to make clear that I think the court erred in vacating our authorization,” Phillips said. “Transco took steps to build out its system and begin serving customers.”

Right after Phillips made that comment, a protester against FERC’s natural gas policies stood up and started interrupting the meeting, which happened several times during the proceedings.

The court did not consider how disruptive the vacatur of FERC’s approval would be on the pipeline’s customers, Phillips continued after the protester was escorted out of the hearing room. Old Dominion Electric Cooperative already has filed comments in support of Transco’s emergency petition, saying the firm service it uses to fuel the 980-MW Wildcat Point combined cycle plant could be interrupted.

The decision that vacated FERC’s approval of the Rio Grande and Texas LNG projects is up in the air as their developers consider appeals, so no mandate will be issued until that process plays out. FERC is conducting new environmental impact statements on the projects, it said in filings issued Sept. 13.

FERC has won some cases on pipeline issues since Phillips became chair, but he said at his post-meeting press conference that the two decisions represent a break from the past.

“This is clearly a shift in the legal landscape regarding these cases,” Phillips said. “What I focus on, though, is we have new commissioners who are here — who are voting … today for the first time — that I look forward to working with on bipartisan and legally durable ways forward to address these pressing issues.”

The new EISes from the two LNG facilities are going to be reviewed in the coming months, with Phillips saying they should be done by summer 2025, at which point FERC will be able to respond to remanded issues from the case.

The Transco case was approved because the firm found some customers willing to sign up for service on its expanded pipeline, but that was over the objections of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities and other state agencies who argued the gas would not be needed. The BPU filed a study saying the state had ample gas for this decade and that in the long term, its climate policies will lead to reduced demand for the fuel. But those arguments ultimately lost out.

Phillips explained how such state policies impact FERC decisions at the press conference.

“It’s a matter of a balance test that we use when we consider the need, and we also consider the arguments for and against any proceeding, including our natural gas pipeline cases,” he said. “We consider what the states want; we give it due consideration, as we do with all arguments raised.”

The two court cases could lead FERC to again reconsider its 1999 policy statement on natural gas infrastructure approvals, which former Chair Richard Glick attempted before being rebuked by members of Congress on Capitol Hill. One of those, retiring Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.), refused to hold hearings on Glick’s renomination in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, effectively ending his term.

“The shift that we’ve seen in the legal landscape regarding our certifications, on LNG in particular, I think does present an opportunity for us to revisit the 25-year-old policies that we have regarding those authorizations,” Phillips said. “To be clear, we have new colleagues. They’ve just gotten here. We certainly want to give them an opportunity to get up to speed on these matters.”

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New IBR Standard to Finally Go to Ballot

NERC’s proposed standard setting generator ride-through requirements for inverter-based resources will go out soon for a formal ballot round the ERO hopes finally will see it gain the required support from industry.

Committee Chair Todd Bennett, of Associated Electric Cooperative, told members of the Standards Committee the revised PRC-029-1 (Frequency and voltage ride-through requirements for IBRs) was out for public comment, having been posted after the technical conference hosted by NERC on Sept. 5. (See NERC, Industry Discuss IBR Issues in Technical Conference.) The formal ballot round will begin Sept. 24 and end Sept. 30.

Bennett said in a Sept. 18 committee meeting that the conference “was received rather well” by ERO stakeholders, complimenting NERC staff for their fast work setting up the event on short notice. NERC’s Board of Trustees in August ordered the committee to hold the conference, invoking its special authority to bypass the normal standards development process for the first time to meet FERC’s November deadline for submitting ride-through standards. (See “Board Invokes Standards Authority to Meet IBR Deadline,” NERC Board of Trustees/MRC Briefs: Aug. 15, 2024.) 

During the two-day conference, NERC staff presented on the background of the standard, while industry stakeholders took part in panels discussing their issues with the proposed standard and possible ways to address them. Amy Casuscelli of Xcel Energy said “it was really helpful to get to hear the technical experts in the room … weigh in on their different perspectives and different views.” 

Casuscelli also praised the inclusion of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) who could address the manufacturing challenges that might be posed by some requirements of the proposed standard. Trustee Sue Kelly, the board’s liaison to the Standards Committee, agreed this community was a valuable addition to the conference. 

“I thought it was very powerful to have everybody all in the same room at the same time. The drafting team reps were able to say, ‘This is why we wrote what we wrote’; the OEMs … who are going to be crucially important to implementing anything were there to tell us what they thought they could and could not do; and we, in turn, were able to say to them, ‘Your equipment is becoming increasingly important, and you bear some responsibility in this as well,’” Kelly said. 

Standards Actions Approved

The committee approved a handful of standards actions at the meeting, starting with a proposal to appoint supplemental members to the standard drafting team (SDT) for Project 2020-06 (Verifications of models and data for generators). 

The project recently was assigned to satisfy Milestone 3 of FERC’s Order 901, which requires the ERO to submit standards addressing validation and verification of models for inverter-based resources by November 2025. 

NERC Manager of Standards Development Jamie Calderon told members the ERO seeks to supplement the SDT to provide “the requisite experience to tackle” the added responsibilities of Order 901. The ERO solicited nominations from the industry and received nine; seven were recommended to the committee for approval. As usual, the candidates were not identified during the meeting except by number. 

Calderon said one of the remaining nominees “did not respond to interview requests, and recommendations were not received” from their references; the other informed NERC they would prefer to join a different SDT. As a result, neither was recommended for approval. 

The seven nominees were approved unanimously, although Robert Blohm of Keen Resources moved to add the second of the unrecommended nominees to the slate. He argued that four of the seven recommended candidates had Canadian backgrounds and adding so much Canadian representation to the team could make it regionally unbalanced. However, Blohm’s motion did not receive a second and did not advance. 

Members also approved the addition of a single new candidate to the SDT for Project 2023-09 (Risk management for third-party cloud services). The committee approved the SDT’s current slate at its July meeting, but since that time, one of the members has stepped down because of workload concerns. They will be replaced by a candidate who was recommended by NERC staff at the July meeting but replaced with a different nominee by the committee. 

Margo Caley of ISO-NE explained that both nominees are from the same sector, meaning there will be no change in sector representation on the SDT. 

Finally, the committee authorized the posting of proposed reliability standard TOP-003-7 (Transmission operator and balancing authority data and information specification and collection) for a 45-day formal comment period, with ballot pools formed in the first 30 days and ballots conducted during the past 10 days. 

TOP-003-7 (on page 14 of the agenda) was developed by the SDT for Project 2022-03 (Energy assurance with energy-constrained resources). The revisions to the existing standard will add near-term energy reliability assessment to the list of functions for which balancing authorities must provide data to entities that request it. 

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Comments on Western RO Stakeholder Plan Show Complexity of Effort

Recent stakeholder comments filed with the West-Wide Governance Pathways Initiative illustrate — once again — the complexity of building the new kind of Western “regional organization” (RO) envisioned by backers of the effort.

The comments came in response to Pathways’ draft plan for the RO’s stakeholder process, an aspect of the organization likely to be as important as its governance structure in swaying some Western electricity sector participants to choose CAISO’s Extended Day-Ahead Market (EDAM) over SPP’s Markets+.

The Pathways Launch Committee floated the plan during an Aug. 28 workshop, the last of four such intensive workshops facilitated by consulting firm Gridworks to hash out ideas about how the RO would engage with its stakeholders and how the stakeholder process would tie into governance. (See No Clear Blueprint for Western ‘RO’ Stakeholder Process.)

At the heart of the proposal is the formation of a Stakeholder Representatives Committee (SRC), described as the “primary stakeholder body that works with RO staff to catalog and prioritize initiatives, as well as to define initiative problem statements and solutions.”

During the workshop to discuss the RO’s stakeholder process, Launch Committee Co-Chair Pam Sporborg, director of transmission and market services at Portland General Electric, described the SRC as an evolution of the Western Energy Imbalance Market’s (WEIM) Regional Issues Forum, which itself has evolved over time into a key stakeholder body for addressing issues related to that market.

The proposal calls for the SRC to be a sector-based body, with sectors to be “self-organized” and committee representatives selected by members of each sector.

“Sectors may elect to use selection criteria to establish diversity among SRC representatives that may be important to the sector,” a presentation accompanying the proposal states.

The proposal defines nine sectors to be represented on the SRC, including:

    • EDAM entities (one seat);
    • WEIM entities (two seats);
    • CAISO participating transmission owners (2);
    • transmission-dependent utilities (3), including one seat reserved for community choice aggregators;
    • public interest organizations (PIOs) (1);
    • consumer advocates (1);
    • large commercial and industrial consumers (1);
    • independent power producers, independent transmission developers and marketers (3), with assurance that IPPs and marketers each have an opportunity for a seat to represent different business models; and
    • distributed energy resources (1).

One seat would be reserved for federal power marketing administrations (PMAs) in either the EDAM or WEIM sectors — if any such agency participates in those markets.

According to the proposal, every organization registered to vote in the RO would have the chance to specify their support, opposition or neutrality when the SRC votes on an issue. To be eligible to vote, an organization must register in a specific sector and agree to a code of conduct.

“Once the organizational votes are tallied, the nine sectors of the SRC will also vote, with the threshold for support, opposition or neutrality determined by the organizations in the sector,” the proposal says. “The SRC representative will report on any specific splits that have been established by that sector, consistent with the self-organizing principle described above. The results of all votes will be provided in the materials related to the issue.”

The plan also puts stakeholder initiatives into three categories, including:

    • compliance/nondiscretionary, such as responses to FERC rulemakings or fixes to market design flaws that require tariff changes;
    • compliance with state and local public policy, which could require stakeholder discussion to determine whether a tariff change is needed; and
    • discretionary initiatives that can be advanced by any stakeholder, the states committee, market monitor, “independent market adviser” or RO staff.

Once initiatives are categorized, the stakeholder process would entail prioritizing them through a “roadmap” process. That would be followed by an “issue evaluation” to determine the nature of the problem to be solved (Stage 1) and an “identification of solutions” (Stage 2). The last step would be seeking approval by the RO board.

Dilution Concern

The Pathways Launch Committee received 22 comments on the proposal, including one combining responses from seven PIOs.

Other commenters included utilities (some jointly filing), large energy consumers, industry interest groups, an energy trader, the Bonneville Power Administration and Google.

In its comments, Black Hills Power expressed concern the SRC “does not provide sufficient representation to utilities, which play a critical role in ensuring grid reliability and managing market operations.”

The South Dakota-based utility is one of two Black Hills Energy subsidiaries that last month said it would pull out of SPP’s Western Energy Imbalance Service and join CAISO’s Western Energy Imbalance Market, although it made no commitment to EDAM. (See CAISO’s WEIM Plucks Black Hills Utilities from SPP’s WEIS.)

“We recognize that all registered utilities within a sector, including utilities, can vote and contribute to the sector’s overall vote,” Black Hills wrote. “However, we still have concerns that utilities’ votes will be diluted within sectors where there are diverse participants.”

Black Hills recommended that Pathways ensure utilities have “a formal mechanism for ensuring that their interests are not overshadowed by other entities within the sector.” It proposed a “more tailored sector designation for utilities” with “clear distinctions” among the types of utilities — such as investor-owned or publicly run — “to ensure that their unique perspectives are not lost within larger, more diverse sectors.”

NV Energy, which already has committed to joining the EDAM, said it supported the use of a sector-based process only for selection of the RO board and development of the annual roadmap to prioritize RO initiatives.

“While recognizing potential benefits of indicative votes, NV Energy does not believe the sector-based process proposed in the draft discussion paper is the best approach,” the utility wrote.

Instead, NV Energy “strongly supports” the indicative voting approach CAISO used in the recent stakeholder process for Pathways Step 1 — which granted the Western Energy Markets (WEM) Governing Body “primary” authority over matters related to the WEIM and EDAM. (See CAISO, WEM Boards Approve Pathways ‘Step 1’ Plan.)

In that situation, the utility noted, the ISO “simply added a voting request to the stakeholder comment template asking if the participant supports, opposes or was neutral to the proposal. The votes were then tabulated and presented to the WEM Governing Body and the CAISO Board of Governors to assist in their deliberations.”

NV Energy said that approach “provides far greater transparency” because it:

    • records and presents each specific vote, preventing intra-sector disagreements over an initiative from being concealed by the sector’s majority vote;
    • “better represents minority interests and reduces a feeling of disenfranchisement” among entities holding a minority position within a sector; and
    • “reduces the burdensome and time-consuming process for separate sector-led votes.”

The utility also recommended a second seat for EDAM entities and questioned the need for three seats for transmission-dependent utilities.

“Presumably, these are transmission-dependent utilities within the EIM/EDAM footprint,” the utility wrote. “If one seat is for a transmission-dependent utility within California and one for a transmission-dependent utility outside of California, it may be understandable but does seem to create a mismatch with the three seats being allotted to the total of EIM and EDAM entities.”

‘Ambiguities’ or ‘Right Balance’

Salt River Project (SRP) said it “generally supports” creation of a “parent committee,” such as the SRC, “through which issues flow both up to the regional organization board and down to working groups.”

“This structure ensures that topics are defined at a high level based on stakeholder input before being remanded down to the working groups/task forces,” it wrote.

But SRP also recommended changing the proposed composition of the SRC to match that of the Western Resource Adequacy Program’s Nominating Committee, which consists of representatives from investor-owned utilities (2), consumer-owned utilities (2), retail competition load-responsible entities (1), PMAs (1), independent power producers/marketers (1), PIOs (1), retail customer advocacy groups (1), industrial customer advocacy groups (1) and one “independent sector” representative for entities that don’t fit into any other category.

SRP also agreed with the proposal that RO staff should take on most of the “burden” of facilitating and administering the stakeholder process, saying the arrangement would allow stakeholders to participate “nimbly” regardless of their staffing levels.

Google offered no comment on the list of proposed SRC sectors but recommended each sector develop a manual of board-approved bylaws to define who could be a member of the sector, frequency of meetings, how it develops consensus and how it communicates its positions to the RO’s committees, staff and board.

“This structure would mirror MISO’s, where sectors are self-organizing but each sector’s bylaws are approved by the board,” the company wrote.

BPA requested one additional seat be reserved for PMAs in either the WEIM or EDAM sector, assuming a PMA is a member of either. In the case of no PMA participation in either market, the agency asked that an additional seat be reserved for PMAs in the transmission-dependent utilities sector given their transmission still would be used to deliver to load in the CAISO-run markets.

BPA said it supports the concept of a category for state and local public policy stakeholder initiatives, but it also wants federal obligations that may be statutory requirements for itself and the Western Area Power Administration to be added to the category.

“In implementing the process, it will be important to ensure that these initiatives only skip Stage 1 in situations where the problem statement has broad agreement or is so clearly defined by the state policy initiative that there is no room for discussion,” BPA wrote.

The California Large Energy Consumers Association (CLECA) commented on “the imbalance between buyers and sellers in SRC voting sector definitions and encourages efforts to establish commensurate supply and demand representation.” CLECA called for the Launch Committee to address the “imbalance” by providing each sector with two seats or, alternatively, just one seat or one seat with one backup.

“All sectors have heterogeneous membership worthy of adequate representation at the SRC. This revision partially restores the balance between supply and demand representation,” CLECA wrote.

The Portland-based Public Power Council (PPC), which represents consumer-owned utilities in the Northwest, raised concerns about “the ambiguities in the RO/CAISO relationship based on the current proposal,” saying the role of both the ISO staff and board is unclear.

“Also, it is unclear whether pursuing an RO stakeholder process as outlined in the discussion document would have any impacts on the existing CAISO stakeholder process and whether those processes would be kept distinctly separate, or whether there would be some combined discussions or efforts between the RO and CAISO. We would appreciate the Launch Committee addressing these issues in the Step 2 proposal,” the PPC wrote.

The seven PIOs — which include the Northwest Energy Coalition, Western Resource Advocates, Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense Fund, among others — said the SRC “strikes the right balance between clear roles for each sector representative while allowing all interested stakeholders to participate in the process.”

The PIOs expressed support for the lack of fees or other monetary requirements for participating in the RO’s stakeholder process.

“This is an important aspect to ensure equal access for all stakeholders; if the regional organization were to require a fee for participating in the stakeholder process, that fee can be a barrier to smaller organizations that, because of competing priorities, may be unable to spend scarce resources on participation fees, and thus will be unable to have a full and equal voice, via voting or committee membership, in the process,” they wrote.

Full comments on the Pathways stakeholder process proposal can be found here.