Southwest Power Pool Beth Looney PNGC SPP at a Glance Service - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Southwest Power Pool

Beth Looney PNGC

SPP at a Glance

• Service territory: 546,000 square miles

(approx.)

• Substations: 4,929
• Generation plants: 735
• Miles of transmission: 66,497
• Coincident peak load: 50,622 MW (July

21, 2016)

• Generating capacity: 87,086 MW (based
• n nameplate capacity as of Jan. 1,

2018)

My Experience With the SPP

• Energy Imbalance Services Market (EIS) launched in February 2007.

Followed and participated in the market as a transmission seam / non-market participant at Associated Electric.

• Similar to Western EIM – Real Time Energy Imbalance Market
• Integrated Market (IM) launched in March 2014. Participated as a

market participant at Sunflower Electric.

• A Day-Ahead Market with Transmission Congestion Rights
• A Reliability Unit Commitment process
• A Real-Time Balancing Market (to replace the EIS market)
• Incorporation of price-based Operating Reserve procurements

SPP Services

• Regional Transmission Organization (RTO) — SPP operates the region’s grid minute-by-minute to ensure

power gets to customers and to eliminate power shortages.

• Reliability Coordination — SPP monitors power flow throughout its footprint and coordinates regional

response in emergency situations or blackouts.

• Tariff Administration — SPP provides “one-stop shopping” for use of the region’s transmission lines.
• Regional Scheduling — SPP ensures the amount of power sent matches with power received.
• Transmission Expansion Planning — SPP identifies system limitations, develops transmission upgrade plans

and tracks projects to ensure timely completion of system reinforcements.

• Market Operations — SPP manages a Day-Ahead Market with Transmission Congestion Rights, a Reliability

Unit Commitment process, a Real-Time Balancing Market and the incorporation of price-based Operating Reserve procurement

• Compliance — SPP Regional Entity enforces compliance with federal and regional reliability standards for

users, owners and operators of the region’s bulk power grid.

• Training — SPP offers continuing education for operations personnel throughout the region. In 2014, it

delivered more than 24,000 training hours to 75 organizations.

• Contract Services — SPP provides reliability, tariff administration and scheduling for nonmembers on a

contract basis.

My RTO Take-Aways

• Ensure policies, market design and implementation are member

driven (Governance)

• Members and impacted parties must have a seat at the table with more rights

than just opinion setting.

• FERC order 1000 transmission project in western Kansas
• Ensure appropriate policies are in place for cost allocation
• Highway byway cost allocation
• Generator interconnection – free rider
• Ensure an independent market monitor
• Planning capacity abuser

Even More Take-Aways

• Hire analysts, quants, and a local representative in the city of the RTO HQ
• Must attend all member stakeholder meetings
• A-Game is not helpful its REQUIRED
• Think outside of traditional utility planning
• Generation location decisions
• Capacity type decisions
• You must know what your neighbors are doing
• Re-evaluate each resource you have
• Tough decisions on retirements and staffing
• Tough decisions on transmission congestion rights (TCR)
• Transmission is KING and will cost a lot more over time
• Understand RTO impacts to existing contracts
• Wind curtailments

Wrap up - Location is Key!

• Where do I site new

generators?

• How much protection

should I have for congestion on that path?

• How much longer must I

endure these prices?

• Where is there
• pportunity?
• Where is there risk?