Ameren Illinois ordered to discover attainable advantages of shifting from MISO to PJM

The Illinois Commerce Fee final week ordered Ameren Illinois to check the prices and advantages of being a MISO member in contrast with becoming a member of the PJM Interconnection, the grid operator that serves the northern a part of the state.

“The ICC feels it’s applicable to discover whether or not membership in MISO continues to offer web advantages to Ameren Illinois’ electrical energy prospects,” ICC Chairman Carrie Zalewski mentioned Friday.

The Prairie State is the one MISO state that absolutely deregulated its electrical utility sector.

In MISO’s final planning useful resource public sale, the clearing value soared to $236.66 MW-day throughout its North and Central areas. The public sale is voluntary and never supposed to spur new capability wanted to make sure useful resource adequacy, however as an alternative is designed to enhance state efforts to ensure they’ve sufficient energy provide, ICC employees mentioned in a report.

“Within the case of Illinois, which means that MISO’s useful resource adequacy assemble should complement Illinois’ reliance on aggressive wholesale markets to self-discipline retail electrical energy costs,” employees mentioned. “Given the newest MISO [planning resources auction] outcomes and the regulatory construction of its membership, it isn’t clear that MISO’s useful resource adequacy assemble accomplishes this purpose.”

The ICC directed Ameren to think about numerous components in its research, together with reliability, useful resource adequacy, resiliency, affordability, fairness and environmental results.

Ameren has a yr to complete the evaluation.