Dive Brief:
- Starting next summer, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator’s Northern and Central regions could face a 1 GW to 3.7 GW shortfall while its Southern region has a potential 3 GW to 4 GW surplus, the grid operator and the Organization of MISO States said in an annual survey released Thursday.
- Overall, MISO faces a 2.7 GW shortfall to a 1.1 GW surplus next summer under two scenarios that have different rates of generation additions, according to the report. By the end of the decade, the potential deficit could grow to 14.4 GW and the surplus could climb to 4.6 GW under the two scenarios, MISO and OMS said.
- “Resource adequacy risks could grow over time across all seasons, absent increased new capacity additions and actions to delay capacity retirements,” they said.
Dive Insight:
Immediate action is needed to bring new capacity online, coordinate resources for new load additions and potentially slow the pace of resource retirements, said MISO and OMS, which represents state utility regulators in the grid operator’s region.
“There is an urgent need to continue and increase collaboration with our state regulators to ensure the evolving generation fleet can meet the growing demands across our footprint,” John Bear, MISO CEO, said in a press release.
The results are similar to other recent OMS-MISO reports that indicated the grid operator may not have enough power supplies to meet its needs.
For the first time, the report offers two outlooks based on how much generation can begin operating in the MISO footprint, which runs from Louisiana to North Dakota. In one estimate based on a 3-year average from 2020 to 2022, MISO assumes 2.3 GW of generation will come online each year. In another projection, based on estimates from interconnection customers with signed interconnection agreements, MISO assumes that 6.1 GW will come online annually.
Potential downside risks include the continuing rapid pace of power plant retirements, with Environmental Protection Agency regulations possibly accelerating the generator shutdowns, according to the report.
Upsides include new capacity enabled by the easing of: supply chain bottlenecks, permitting constraints and labor shortages as well as market responses to local capacity shortfalls, MISO and OMS said.
The survey found that the largest resource adequacy risks occur in the spring and summer.
MISO said it anticipates strong, long-term load growth driven by data centers, manufacturing, increased cooling demand, electric vehicles and cryptocurrency operations.
The grid operator warned that its methods for determining a resource’s capacity value may overstate it for high-risk periods, making MISO more vulnerable to reliability problems than it appears.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is reviewing MISO’s proposal to update its accreditation methodology to better account for how much different resources bolster grid reliability during stressed periods.
