Dive Brief:
- A proposal to establish a three-year forward capacity auction in the Midcontinent ISO's choice zones is drawing concern from stakeholders, RTO Insider reports, in part over the implementation timeline and how the prices which would be formulated.
- Existing Planning Resource Auctions (PRA) were not designed for deregulated zones, MISO said in its proposal, and "narrowly focused reforms are required" to complement the current market.
- Absent any changes, MISO indicated, the current market will continue to provide "only a balancing function and will fail to efficiently support resource investment decisions" in certain areas.
Dive Insight:
MISO's current auction systems were not designed for deregulated markets, leading the grid operator to propose a separate three-year auction for retail choice zones. But RTO Insider reports stakeholders have raised some concerns about the plan and its implementation.
There were multiple questions about how three-year forecasts would be developed, to which Jeff Bladen, MISO executive director of market design, said “we’ll need to discuss that with stakeholders in a little more detail."
MISO's current resource adequacy construct balances capacity is developed or procured on a forward basis through local or state jurisdictional planning processes and then validates regional and locational resource adequacy requirements.
"As the landscape changes, however, it is now evident MISO’s markets also need to effectively and efficiently signal the need to maintain existing and/or invest in new resources necessary to assure resource adequacy in competitive retail areas that rely exclusively on markets," the grid operator said in its proposal. "Given the existing PRA was not designed to meet this need, narrowly focused reforms are required to complement the existing market construct while also preserving the benefits currently derived by most of MISO’s region from simple capacity balancing."
