Midwest ISO OKs MAPP Merger; Moves Forward With SPP Deal

- The board of directors of the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator Inc. Thursday approved a long-planned merger with a neighboring power grid manager in the Great Plains.

The board also gave the Midwest ISO staff the go-ahead to move forward with plans to acquire another transmission-monitoring organization in the Southwest.

Under the Great Plains power deal, the Midwest ISO will assume control of the Mid-Continent Area Power Pool's operating center in St. Paul, Minn., and will be responsible for directing the flow of up to 81,000 megawatts of power across more than 70,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines in a large swath of the central U.S.

The deal is expected to close Nov. 30 and the Midwest ISO is scheduled to begin operating the grid Dec. 15, a Midwest ISO spokeswoman said.

In approving the merger, the board waived a requirement that utilities delivering two-thirds of the total power consumed in the Mid-Continent Area Power Pool, or MAPP, join the Midwest ISO. Energy companies delivering 65% of the electricity used in MAPP have joined or committed to join the Midwest ISO and the grid operator said it expects more companies to sign on.

The board's approval served as the final clearance for the merger. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission agreed earlier this month to allow companies to pay only one fee for shipping power across transmission lines in the soon-to-be combined grid in the Midwest and Great Plains. FERC also agreed to allow MAPP members join an advisory committee of the Midwest ISO.

ISO spokeswoman Mary Lynn Webster said the board of the Midwest ISO had authorized staff to move forward with plans to develop a definitive agreement for acquiring the Southwest Power Pool, or SPP.

Terms of the deal call for the Midwest ISO to acquire SPP's control center in Little Rock, Ark., and to operate the power lines in its Southwest territory, Webster said.

There is no timeline for this deal, but she said: "Both sides are interested in doing it as quickly as possible."

Once staff of the Midwest ISO and SPP finalize to the merger terms, the boards and member companies of both organizations, and the FERC, must approve the conditions.

The merger won't affect power-shipping agreements that the Midwest ISO forged with the Alliance regional transmission organization, a planned grid operator that would oversee the transmission system in parts of Michigan, Ohio and Virginia, Webster said.