The $1.6 billion Joint Targeted Interconnection Queue transmission portfolio of MISO and SPP remains in play even though the U.S. Department of Energy has reneged on almost half a billion dollars in funding.
DOE in early October revoked the $464.5 million from the department’s Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) program that it awarded the JTIQ portfolio in 2023. (See DOE Terminates $7.56B in Energy Grants for Projects in Blue States.)
“MISO is monitoring this developing situation,” MISO Director of Expansion Planning Jeanna Furnish said at an Oct. 8 Planning Advisory Committee meeting.
Furnish said MISO has not yet received a cancellation notice from DOE for the funding nor has it heard from its project partners that any projects should be excised. The Minnesota Department of Commerce led the application for federal funding with assistance from the Great Plains Institute.
Mississippi Public Service Commission consultant Bill Booth asked if MISO still is moving ahead with the JTIQ, at the Oct. 7 meetup of the Entergy Regional State Committee Working Group.
“At this point, the projects are still approved, so we’re still including them” in modeling for planning, Furnish replied. She declined to answer questions on whether MISO and SPP would consider a change to their cost allocation due to the federal government withdrawing funding.
MISO and SPP received approval from FERC in late 2024 to allocate the costs of the JTIQ portfolio 100% to interconnecting generation assessed on a per-megawatt basis. The two RTOs initially planned to use a split involving 90% to generators, 10% to load, but abandoned the approach after DOE announced the portfolio would receive federal money. (See MISO, SPP Ditch 90/10 JTIQ Allocation After $465M DOE Grant.)
When FERC approved the allocation, it said it did so “based on the unique set of facts and circumstances of the proposed JTIQ framework.” It cited the $464.5 million DOE GRIP funding that would cover about 25% of project costs, the “massive amounts of interconnection requests,” the lack of transmission system capacity at the seam to accommodate this volume of interconnection, and the significant incremental cost of constructing network upgrades under the RTOs’ old affected system study process. (See FERC Upholds MISO and SPP’s JTIQ Cost Allocation over Criticism.)
Booth asked whether the same amount of renewable energy is anticipated to connect at the seams, considering that the Trump administration terminated renewable energy tax credits. The JTIQ portfolio is expected to enable 28 GW in mostly renewable generation additions. Furnish again declined to answer.
In May, National Grid Renewables warned MISO that the “certainty of this funding has come into question under the current presidential administration.” The company was voicing concerns over what it called a “lopsided” cost allocation of the JTIQ portfolio, where generation pays 100% of line costs and load isn’t charged anything. National Grid said the allocation solely to generation was approved only because the grants would fund a good portion of the JTIQ portfolio. It predicted challenges in cost allocation and construction timelines if grant funding is revoked and generators are left to pay significantly more than what they estimated.
The Southern Renewable Energy Association similarly predicted that MISO and SPP’s cost allocation method “could further complicate cost recovery if DOE funding were not to materialize.”
MISO responded at the time that it wasn’t expecting JTIQ funding changes and said DOE had not indicated that GRIP funding is in jeopardy. However, the RTO added that “JTIQ is not contingent upon the receipt of GRIP funding.” The Trump administration has initially paused and is reviewing all GRIP funding awards doled out under the Biden administration.
