MISO said it will not postpone the kickoff of a study on its 2025 cycle of interconnection requests, rebuffing stakeholders’ requests for a slowdown to clear some of the queue’s four-year backlog.
“MISO doesn’t want to be looked at as slowing down the queue process. We do think we’re ready to kick off. … We’re committed to Jan. 5,” Manager of Generation Interconnection Ryan Westphal told the Interconnection Process Working Group during a teleconference Dec. 2.
Westphal said MISO would commence studies on the 2025 cycle of projects on Jan. 5, 2026, as scheduled.
Some stakeholders have advised MISO to delay the first studies on the 2025 queue cycle until the RTO is further along processing projects that entered three and four years ago, allowing developers to reach decisions on whether to continue with their plans. (See Stakeholders Ask MISO to Pause ’25 Queue to Get a Handle on 4-Year Backlog.)
But Westphal said FERC Order 2023 requires MISO to begin new interconnection study cycles 90 days after it closes an application window.
Westphal said MISO would have to seek a waiver with FERC to delay studies and cannot assume the commission would approve it, leaving the RTO no choice but to forge ahead with the early January timetable. He said MISO is working on prescreening the 2025 entrants.
“Seeking a waiver to postpone the 2025 cycle could be construed as MISO trying to slow down our queue process, which is directly counter to MISO’s direction to complete queue cycles in 373 days,” Westphal said.
Some stakeholders remain adamant that there are too many unknowns following study results to simultaneously process four years of interconnection requests.
REV Renewables’ Humberto Branco said the 2023 cycle is essentially a “wild card.” He said MISO trying to manage all cycles across all regions “just to get it done” is too much.
“There is some uncertainty there, I acknowledge that,” Westphal said. “We have to move these cycles forward as best we can.” He added that even later-stage queue projects fall victim to restudies.
Westphal said MISO continues to automate what it can using Pearl Street’s SUGAR (Suite of Unified Grid Analyses with Renewables) software. He said the RTO is now focused on automating some aspects of model building. (See MISO: New Software Effective, Faster than Previous Queue Study Process.)
Westphal said MISO only includes network upgrades for generation projects that have made it to the third phase of the queue in its base case modeling. He said those upgrades are the most likely to be constructed and not disrupt lower-queued projects. Westphal said MISO doesn’t want to give developers unrealistic cost responsibilities.
MISO Director of Resource Utilization Andy Witmeier said interconnection customers can mitigate the risk of higher-than-expected network upgrades by using model data posted by the RTO in their own analyses.
“The status quo is no longer acceptable. We have to continue to move these queue cycles forward to get this cleared and move to a one-year queue process,” Witmeier told stakeholders.
MISO’s Central and West planning regions still have projects in the queue from the 2021 cycle. Westphal said MISO is “trying to wrap up” those projects in early 2026.
The 2022 cycle — MISO’s largest — will emerge from the three-part queue’s second phase in early 2026. The RTO meanwhile expects the 2023 cycle to enter the second phase of studies late this year and conclude in early April 2026, while the 2025 cycle will finish up the first phase in mid-April.
Altogether, MISO has 174 GW worth of projects in its queue, a value that has fallen from 312 GW at the beginning of 2025. (See MISO Interconnection Queue Dips Below 175 GW.)
Coalition of Midwest Power Producers’ Travis Stewart said he appreciated MISO’s engineering efforts but asked staff to post projected dates according to when it could “realistically” reach milestones, not just the tariff-defined deadlines. He added that he has noticed the RTO is processing queue cycles noticeably faster now.
“It feels, from my perspective, that the pendulum has swung in terms of timing,” Stewart said.
Westphal agreed that MISO is seeing speedier results. He said the RTO is poised to complete the 2025 cycle in the span of a year.
“We’ve all got to be ready to move fast, and not just MISO, to get these cycles processed,” Westphal said.
