NEW ORLEANS — FERC Commissioner Judy Chang delivered remarks on the importance of meeting ballooning load at MISO Board Week.  

Chang, who made an unscheduled appearance March 13, said the pace and size of recent load growth could “threaten the reliability of our grid.”  

“We have to meet this event. We have no choice,” she told MISO leadership and members.  

Chang said she’s focused on solving load growth collaboratively, competitively and within the markets. She said she would “take very seriously the cost issue affecting ratepayers” while ensuring necessary infrastructure can be built.  

Chang characterized ever-increasing load as an opportunity, while warning it might come with “a lot of headaches.”  

She also called MISO’s regional transmission planning process “a model for the rest of the country” and a cornerstone to meeting the needs of the coming decade.  

“Thank you for being a leader in this area,” she said.  

“We’re seeing significant load growth in the South and up into the Midwest in our footprint,” MISO CEO John Bear said following Chang’s brief remarks. 

Bear said MISO’s yearlong pause in long-range transmission planning to recalibrate its 20-year planning futures is necessary to contemplate the effect load growth will have on the footprint and how transmission needs might escalate. (See MISO Aims for 4 New Tx Planning Futures in 9 Months.)  

During a March 12 strategy update, Senior Vice President Todd Hillman said MISO is concerned primarily with the pace of generation coming online and going offline in the footprint combined with the unprecedented load growth.  

Hillman said MISO expects its solar fleet to double every year from now until 2028, when it predicts it will have 41.7 GW of panels. He noted that nameplate solar capacity already has doubled since the beginning of winter, when it was 6 GW.  

Hillman said that dominant renewable energy mix could leave MISO with ramping needs as high as 100 GW on some days by 2044. Over that time frame, MISO could experience anywhere from 1.6 to 2.7% compound load growth annually.