MISO’s second try at recovery mechanism for certain O&M costs clears FERC

摘要

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Thursday gave the nod to tariff changes that would allow transmission owners in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator footprint to recover reasonable costs from generators for the operation, maintenance and repair of facilities that interconnect their power projects to the grid. Generator interconnection agreements (GIAs) in MISO specify that interconnection customers will be on the hook for O&M expenses associated with transmission owners’ interconnection facilities, but MISO’s tariff previously lacked a mechanism for the calculation and recovery of those expenses from the responsible interconnection customers. An earlier proposal (ER18-1731) to facilitate such cost recovery through a so-called “annual O&M and overheads charge” was shot down by FERC in 2018. The new proposal (ER20-170) MISO and a group of transmission owners submitted in October addressed the commission’s concerns with the calculation of the new charge, and represented “a just and reasonable method for allocating all of the various types of O&M expenses associated with [transmission owners’ interconnection facilities],” FERC said in an order Thursday.