ATC is one of the limited number of companies that was designated in the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) 2005 Compliance Enforcement Program Report as fully compliant with the NERC Reliability Standards in 2005. We achieved this result even though this was one of the years in which we received a comprehensive audit by our designated compliance monitor, the Mid-American Interconnected Network (MAIN).

In 2006, we are committed to maintaining our fully compliant status with all of the existing and newly approved NERC standard requirements. Since the MAIN organization was replaced by the Midwest Reliability Organization (MRO) and the ReliabilityFirst Corporation (RFC) at the beginning of 2006, we will now be demonstrating our compliance with NERC Standards to both regional compliance monitors this year. This dual reporting occurs because ATC serves customers that are members in each of these Regional Reliability Organizations.

The new mandatory NERC Reliability Standards assign accountability for specific requirements based on newly defined entity functions. ATC registered with both the MRO and RFC as performing the following entity functions - Transmission Owner, Transmission Operator, Transmission Planner and Planning Authority (NERC has since replaced the Planning Authority function with Planning Coordinator). The following discussion of NERC compliance in this document will focus on ATC’s Transmission Planner accountabilities. One purpose of this section is to enhance our ability to provide documentation of ATC compliance with Transmission Planner accountabilities.

The primary Transmission Planner responsibilities include system performance assessments and system modeling. The system performance assessment standards include checking for exceeded voltage criteria limits, system equipment overloads, adequate stability, cascading outages, loss of load, and firm transfer curtailments under a wide range of system operating conditions.

There are thirty (30) operating conditions to consider for compliance which are grouped into in four (4) categories. The requirements associated with each of the four categories are contained in four separate NERC standards:

A. Normal (Standard TPL-001-0)

B. Single element contingencies (Standard TPL-002-0)

C. Multiple element contingencies (Standard TPL-003-0)

D. Extreme events (Standard TPL-004-0)

The assessments presented in this document were developed using power system models that were derived from cases that were provided by the Multi- Modeling Working Group (MMWG) which prepares cases for industry-wide use. Details regarding the specific system models that were used in this assessment are given in the Methodology & assumptions section. Additional explanation of the methods and the frequency of system model updating is given in the Model building criteria section of the Planning criteria section.

The system performance assessments for the 2007 through 2011 timeframe address the near-term planning horizon requirements. The assessments beyond 2011 through 2015 deal with long-term planning horizon requirements.

A complete listing of the planning criteria that we apply, including those which are beyond the NERC, MRO, and RFC planning criteria, can be found in the Planning criteria section.

The system performance assessments for Category A (normal) and Category B (single element contingencies) conditions are given in the Reactive power analysis section.

The system performance assessments for Category C (multiple element contingencies) and Category D (extreme event) conditions are contained in the Multiple outage analysis and Reactive power analysis sections.

The compliance requirements dealing with system stability, generator stability, and voltage stability for all four Category (A, B, C, and D) conditions are dealt with in the System stability section. 

The listing of potential bulk power system reinforcements to address identified near-term and long-term planning horizon needs are provided in Tables PR-2 through PR-23.

Information regarding studies that are specific to generation interconnection requests is described in the Generation interconnections section. Any publicly available generation interconnection request details and completed study reports can be accessed through the MISO Web site at http://oasis.midwestiso.org/documents/ATC/queue.html.

Descriptions of the system performance studies that are prepared jointly with other interconnection companies, regional groups, or government bodies are given in the Regional analysis section.