CARMEL, Ind. — A recent MISO workshop on storage providing transmission services made clear how much the technology is blurring the once clear lines between generation and transmission.
In opening the Oct. 31 workshop, MISO Director of Planning Jeff Webb jokingly nodded to the industry’s choice of “SATA” as shorthand for “storage as a transmission asset,” saying: “Happy Halloween. Welcome to what we’re calling SATAN’s workshop.”
MISO last month detailed how SATA would be evaluated in its annual Transmission Expansion Plan reliability studies compared with traditional solutions. The RTO is proposing that costs for storage projects selected as a preferred transmission solution would be recovered in local transmission zonal rates while avoiding double recovery for the same service in the energy market. (See MISO Contemplates Storage as Tx Reliability Asset.)
“I don’t expect … that we’re going to have a lot of energy storage resources that we’re going to consider to be the preferred option,” Webb said.
For now, MISO is only proposing a model for storage to act as a transmission reliability solution, solving thermal, voltage or stability issues. Beyond that, Webb said the RTO will have to pick through more complex Tariff issues.
He said it will hold off on discussions around evaluating storage as economic transmission, competitive storage projects and how regional cost sharing for high-voltage transmission projects applies to storage.
The Interconnection Question
MISO has laid out potential paths for interconnecting SATA, including only requiring the MTEP process — not the interconnection queue — for transmission-only assets. An interconnection queue requirement would kick in if a storage owner decides to begin offering market services.
Alternatively, MISO could require entering the interconnection queue for all SATA, even for assets that don’t plan on participating in the energy market, Webb said. Some stakeholders also contend that SATA providing some market services should not be subject to a queue requirement unless it plans to offer capacity.
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