MISO is taking load updates and stakeholder suggestions as part of a pilot program to improve its long-term load forecasting.

MISO Strategic Insights Manager Dominique Davis said MISO will use stakeholders’ ideas and data to perform an annual refresh of the long-term forecast that it first published at the end of 2024.

Speaking at an Oct. 8 Planning Advisory Committee, Davis said the load forecasting pilot will help refine how MISO collects load data that informs its long-term transmission planning and resource adequacy projections. The RTO launched a stakeholder survey Sept. 25 that will stay open through Oct. 31.

Davis said MISO eventually hopes to create a “24/7 repository” of load data. However, she added that’s an “ambitious goal,” so for now, it is open to hearing how often it should collect load estimates.

The grid operator plans to publish an updated load forecast in the first quarter of 2026.

MISO’s efforts come as forecasting large loads has garnered national attention.

In mid-September, FERC Chair David Rosner requested MISO and other RTOs’ perspectives on large load forecasting. (See FERC Focusing on Large Loads, Clearing the Decks Under Rosner.) Rosner issued a letter request to CEO John Bear using the same docket as Republican states’ complaint seeking to scale down MISO’s second long-range transmission plan portfolio (EL25-109). MISO has said data center load growth makes the nearly $22 billion transmission portfolio more relevant than ever.

Rosner posed a series of questions to MISO, asking the RTO to describe how it, its utilities and state regulators obtain commercial operation estimates for large loads; how it screens large load requests before including them in forecasts; how it estimates actual electricity consumption compared to a load’s requested level of interconnection service; and how the RTO coordinates with utilities at the regional or interregional level to share best practices and avoid double-counting.