The California ISO Board of Governors on Feb. 3 approved its first Native American tribe as a participating transmission owner.
Morongo Transmission LLC, owned by the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, will lease a portion of the West of Devers project, a $1 billion upgrade of existing transmission lines owned by Edison International subsidiary Southern California Edison Co. intended to increase transmission capacity by 3.2 GW between Riverside County, Calif., and areas east of Los Angeles.
The leased transmission capacity will be turned over to CAISO's operational control, and with independent system operator's board and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approval, Morongo Transmission will become a participating transmission owner within CAISO.
"This will be the first federally recognized American Indian tribe to become [an ISO] participating transmission owner," CAISO President and CEO Elliot Mainzer said during the Feb. 3 board meeting.
The board's approval is contingent upon Morongo executing a transmission control agreement with SCE and FERC approving the tariff (ER21-669), according to the ISO. Morongo's interest in West of Devers was established by a transaction that allows SCE to construct the project across Morongo Band of Mission Indians land in exchange for the right for Morongo to participate with SCE in the financing of the project.
"The ISO initially identified the project as necessary to connect certain renewable generation projects to the ISO grid and subsequently confirmed the need for the proposed project in its review of policy-driven transmission projects in its transmission planning process to provide deliverability to expected renewable generation in the Riverside East and Imperial Valley areas to meet California's Renewables Portfolio Standard goals," according to the ISO.
The West of Devers project, approved by the California Public Utilities Commission in 2016, involves rebuilding 48 corridor miles of 220-kV circuits with higher-capacity conductors to increase power transfer capability by about 3.2 GW, ISO senior contract negotiator Riddhi Ray said during the Feb. 3 board meeting.
The project is under construction by SCE and is expected to be completed by May 15.
Looking back, and forward
In a report to the board, Mainzer discussed the findings of the final root cause analysis of the August 2020 forced outages released Jan. 13 by the ISO, California Public Utilities Commission and California Energy Commission that confirmed extreme weather conditions, resource adequacy and planning processes, and market practices all contributed to the outages, saying additional work is needed to ensure sufficient resources are available to serve load during the net peak period and other periods of system stress, he said.
"We remain very focused and committed to evaluating whether there are elements of our market or policy framework which may have contributed to observed demand response performance issues and are working with demand response service providers to look for ways to enable such resources to play an important role in helping to maintain reliability in California," Mainzer said.
Mainzer in his report also summarized the ISO's primary focus areas for summer 2021 readiness, which include a commitment to making changes to market processes addressing lessons learned, working with the battery storage industry to ensure it is ready for the net peak under stressed operating conditions, refining proposed increases to the planning reserve margin, and establishing additional mechanisms to ensure rational price formation during stressed operating conditions.
Kassia Micek is a reporter for S&P Global Platts. S&P Global Market Intelligence and S&P Global Platts are owned by S&P Global Inc.