On May 14, 2025, FERC accepted Southwest Power Pool, Inc.’s (“SPP”) proposed revisions to its Open Access Transmission Tariff (“OATT”) to modify its high priority transmission study planning process. SPP argued these changes will allow transmission studies to better address transmission issues identified by stakeholders by expanding the scope of such studies to allow for considerations beyond economic benefits and costs, such as short-circuit and dynamic stability. FERC accepted the proposed OATT revisions as just and reasonable, finding the revised process to satisfy the goals of FERC Order No. 890 and allow SPP’s studies to address the specific needs of stakeholders.
FERC’s Order No. 890 required all public utility transmission providers to create a process for a coordinated regional planning process in alignment with established planning principles. One of those planning principles, the economic planning studies, was created to expand transmission planning beyond including only reliability considerations. Specifically, the principle requires that stakeholders be permitted to request a stated number of high priority studies to address either congestion and/or integrating new loads or generating resources to the system.
SPP, in its initial Order No. 890 compliance filing, established the right for stakeholders to request at least three studies for priority economic upgrades. The costs of the studies would be recovered through SPP’s OATT. These studies can be requested as part of SPP’s Integrated Transmission Planning process. Such studies would analyze the potential investments or system upgrades necessary to accommodate new resources, which can include generation, transmission, or demand resources. SPP’s current high priority transmission study process analyzes the economic benefits and costs for transmission projects under consideration to be included in SPP’s Transmission Expansion Plan.
SPP proposed four main revisions to its high priority transmission study process, including (1) broadening the potential scope of high priority studies,1 (2) establishing first-come, first-served sequencing for consideration of high priority studies and providing that such studies generally will not be performed concurrently, (3) creating a dispute resolution process for disputes arising in circumstances where more than three high priority study requests are submitted within a year, and (4) other clarifications to the high priority study process.
FERC, in a unanimous decision, accepted the proposed modifications to the high priority transmission study planning process after determining the revised process to be just and reasonable and not unduly discriminatory or preferential. FERC found that the proposed revisions give stakeholders the right to request a defined number of high priority studies annually to address congestion and/or the integration of new resources or loads, consistent with the directives in Order No. 890, and agreed that the proposed modifications give SPP the opportunity to tailor such studies to the needs of individual stakeholders. Further, FERC found that the first-come, first-served priority for the consideration of requests and corresponding dispute resolution procedures establish reasonable guidelines if more than three study requests are submitted in one year. The tariff revisions have an effective date of May 19, 2025.
FERC’s order accepting SPP’s proposed tariff revisions, issued in Docket No. ER25-1690-000, is available here.
- SPP expanded the potential scope of the high priority transmission studies by permitting consideration of topics besides adjusted production cost economic analysis to be included in the high priority transmission studies.
