The Midcontinent ISO will ask its board of directors to approve an estimated $130 million transmission project in the Entergy Corp. service area to be developed through a competitive process, only the second time the grid operator will have done so.
MISO released an updated draft of its Transmission Expansion Plan 2017, or MTEP 17, report that recommends its board award the development of the Hartburg-Sabine Junction project, previously referred to as the West of the Atchafalaya Basin project, through competition. The board is scheduled to meet Dec. 7.
The project would help alleviate congestion issues in MISO's South region, which includes Entergy's service territory in portions of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas as well as other, smaller interconnected utilities. Earlier in the development of the MTEP 17, Entergy and Xcel Energy Inc., whose Upper Midwest service territory is within MISO's West region, had raised concerns about the process that MISO used to approve the Hartburg-Sabine project, leading MISO in October to take a vote among members on whether to include the project in the plan.
If approved by the board, the Hartburg-Sabine project would be the second "market efficiency" project that MISO will bid out competitively under the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's Order 1000, a landmark order from 2011 that required regional grid operators to open up transmission development to competition. Previously, MISO awarded ownership and construction of the 345-kV Duff-Coleman project in Indiana through competition.
Market efficiency projects ease regional reliability and transmission bottlenecks and have to meet certain requirements such as that the project's benefits must exceed costs by a factor of 1.25.
In its latest transmission expansion plan, MISO recommends a total of 354 new projects, totaling about $2.7 billion in investments, but the Hartburg-Sabine project is the sole market efficiency project in the plan. The rest of the projects are a mix of baseline reliability projects that help meet federal reliability standards, "other" projects that tend to serve local reliability or public policy needs, generation interconnection projects and targeted market efficiency projects. Targeted market efficiency projects include those that ease congestion between neighboring power markets.
The Hartburg-Sabine junction project includes a new 500-kV line from Hartburg to a new 500/230-kV substation, and a new 500/230-kV transformer. It will also involve reconfiguring existing transmission lines to connect to the new substation, according to the report.
The MTEP 17 report also proposes a "cost allocation to better align the costs and benefits of market efficiency projects," MISO officials said in a Nov. 29 email. The cost allocation proposal still requires FERC approval but looks to create separate local resource zones for the state of Louisiana and parts of Texas, according to a Nov. 30 email from MISO.
