Southwest Power Pool

KISO's board of governors approved a large loads proposal designed to accommodate growing artificial intelligence data center demand in the ISO.

MISO, SPP fail again to find inter-regional projects.

Expectations for the first joint inter-regional project between MISO and SPP, a 500 kilovolt transmission project from Oklahoma to Arkansas, have vanished with the grid operator's decision to conclude a two-year study without a recommendation.

Report examines SPP's Western BA Energy Alerts.

A report from SPP's Market Monitoring Unit digs into energy emergency alerts issued for the RTO's West Balancing Authority area on three days over the summer, concluding that the West BA's reliability issues extend beyond a capacity shortage.

Read these stories and more at www.rtoinsider.com.

One, you know, to try to address that cost uncertainty problem kind of head on.

um you know there's there's a few things people are looking at uh one in particular is an spp um the southwest power pool rto i think a lot of people familiar they recently implemented a new interconnection procedure called the consolidated planning process and it's could be really big paradigm shift and that is they are proactively studying the needs of the grid for both regional transmission as well as generator interconnection needs And the result of that model is an interconnection fee that is known ahead of time before you enter the queue.

And those costs are binding.

They won't change.

Fred Knapp has this report.

Driven by data centers and other industry, demand for electricity is expected to nearly double in the next 10 years, says Steve Purdy of the Southwest Power Pool.

But unlike Iowa and South Dakota, which get about 60% of their electricity from wind and solar, Nebraska gets only about 32%, says Jeff Clark of the Advanced Power Alliance Trade Association.

Earlier this year, to ease siting for wind and solar projects, Senator Stan Klaus proposed uniform state standards for setbacks, height, and noise limits instead of potentially more restrictive county zoning.

Total project value sums to $5,252 million, The four cross-regional awards to Colorado, Oklahoma, Ohio, and Indiana take 43% of the federal dollars.

DOE describes one of them, the three-corners connector between the Southwest Power Pool and the Western Interconnection, as a new high-capacity transmission link which places it outside the reconductoring work.

Which technologies appear in the 31 project descriptions? Line rating technology appears in more project descriptions than any other single technology.

11 of the 31 descriptions name dynamic line rating or a line rating or capacity rating system.

If

I can ask you about a project specifically, would you tell our listeners about the Southwest Power Pool project? You know, it's a real example that I'd like you to take us through.

So SPP, you know, Southwest Power Pool, they're one of the large power pool operator in the US.

But one of their important role is to maintain the regional reliability.

So they are facing a industry wide challenge these days.

Exactly.

I think that is the real deal here because the future of the industry is not just about building new hardware, modernize the infrastructure, but also help the industry members to move from insights to action much faster.

Your Southwest Power Pool project, the advancements that you've created are just phenomenal.

Out West, there is this fierce competition over day ahead markets.

You have SPP, the Southwest Power Pool, pushing a platform called Markets Plus, and they are actively battling Kyso's competing platform called EDAM, the Extended Day Ahead Market.

Yeah, the Turf War is real.

SPP released a white paper arguing that the Bonneville Power Administration should stick with Markets Plus.

Yeah.

Or TEALS and, and SPP, Southwest Power Pool, they basically say, "Hey, we can inter-interconnect you really quickly, but you have to commit to certain levels of interruptibility." I think ultimately, this could become a very, very powerful tool-

Mm-hmm

... and make the grid better.

A year ago, DOE had never issued an order of this kind.

PJM has now held the authority repeatedly during twenty twenty-six, follows a written procedure for it, and along with the Southwest Power Pool, has stakeholder work underway on how large loads take part in emergencies.

The orders arrive at short notice and expire within days, so facilities teams are best served entering winter with a verified runtime estimate, a replenishment plan, and a clear reading of which emergency instructions apply to their site.

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The substantive principle, large load customers, not existing rate payers, pay for the infrastructure their growth demands, is now a federal reference point.

CAISO proceedings, SPP's Western footprint, bilateral Northwest markets.

Counterparties in those fights can cite DOE's position directly.

That's a meaningful shift in the policy landscape for any utility navigating its own large load tariff negotiations right now.

Turning to the North Plains connector, FERC accepted the interconnection agreement, the contract that formally ties a new project to the grid and locks in the terms of that connection, for the proposed 1,500-megawatt high-voltage direct current line between Coal Strip's 500-kilovolt substation in Montana and a planned substation in Morton County, North Dakota.

The agreement is effective October 11th.

Commercial operation is planned for November 30, 2032, and once network upgrades finish, generation on either side becomes eligible for SPP's integrated marketplace.

This is a concrete seam crossing tie between the eastern and western interconnections anchored at Coal Strip.