MISO is wrapping up its 2020 Transmission Expansion Plan (MTEP 20) with an eye on next year’s planning cycle that contains more aggressive renewable energy predictions.
MTEP 20 includes 514 projects costing slightly more than $4 billion. The most expensive project remains Ameren’s new Massac substation in Southern Illinois and the conversion of the nearby Joppa station from 230 kV to 345 kV, at an estimated cost of $112.4 million.
“At this time of the year, we’re ending MTEP 20 and starting MTEP 21,” planning engineer Scott Goodwin told stakeholders during a Planning Subcommittee meeting Tuesday.
MISO has closed the request deadline for special targeted study requests to be conducted under MTEP 21.
The Environmental Groups sector has requested the grid operator conduct two studies examining footprint changes if either LG&E and KU Energy or Memphis Light, Gas and Water join MISO within the next five years.
Transmission owners oppose the request. “We didn’t think MTEP is the place to evaluate new members. It’s about evaluating transmission projects,” Entergy’s Yarrow Etheredge said.
Goodwin said MISO will begin scheduling MTEP 21 subregional planning meetings to discuss project needs. The RTO will also soon release MTEP 21 economic models that draw on its new, 20-year futures scenarios, economic planner Nickolas Przybilla added.
MISO continues to establish resource expansion location estimates under the three 20-year MTEP 21 futures. (See MISO Foresees Massive Shift to Renewables by 2040.)
The grid operator is relying on a combination of integrated resource plans and utilities’ public carbon-reduction commitments to predict resource siting under the new planning futures.
“It’s both the media and IRPs,” MISO Planning Manager Tony Hunziker said during a Planning Advisory Committee conference call Wednesday. “It’s recognizing that sometimes a press release precedes plans and also recognizing that not all utilities have to file integrated resource plans.”
Hunziker said MISO is drawing on the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Annual Technology Baselines to help predict when generation technologies are increasingly adopted.
MISO’s Future I expects solar expansion on par with the footprint’s current amount of wind generation. In Future II, the RTO foresees energy storage and electrification beginning to join solar on center stage. By Future III, electrification and storage take a consequential role in supply and demand, while wind and natural gas generation each taking a 30% share of the energy mix. Future III also assumes 50% renewable energy use.
Some stakeholders said MISO should not simply take utilities’ target announcements at face value and should rely on something more concrete to make future generation assumptions.
“I just don’t think we have evidence that utilities waffle a lot. I don’t think we have a record like that,” Clean Grid Alliance’s Natalie McIntire said. “When utilities make announcements, they tend to be well thought out.”
States, cities and utilities in the MISO footprint are fast piling up carbon-reduction goals.
Michigan is the latest state to announce a carbon-neutrality goal. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer late last month said the state will meet a net-zero emissions goal by 2050, if not sooner. The announcement late last month will likely cause utilities to rethink their IRPs.
Ameren and Entergy have also committed to carbon neutrality by 2050.
Queue Timeline Cutbacks Still in the Works
To reach those targets, MISO must make headway on the 106 GW of mostly renewable generation in its generator interconnection queue’s 705 projects.
The mammoth queue is down from a record 756 projects, totaling 113 GW, in August. MISO said about 20 interconnection customers in its South and West planning regions failed to provide proof of site control and were forced to withdraw projects.
To speed up queue processing, the grid operator plans to whittle down the three-part definitive planning phase and generation interconnection agreement negotiations from more than 500 days to a calendar year. (See Record Number of Entrants Line up for MISO Queue.)
MISO engineer Miles Larson said the RTO plans to cut about 140 total days from queue processing so it can catch up on projects and bring the four planning regions’ studies into the same queue-cycle year. MISO is currently processing queue cycles dating back to 2017.
“We continue to see an overwhelming support for reducing the [generation interconnection process] timeline,” Larson said during an Interconnection Process Working Group conference call Monday.
MISO wants GIA negotiations and execution pared from about 150 day to 100 days. That means some negotiations will simultaneously occur as staff wrap up final network upgrade studies.
Larson said MISO wants to arrive at a “repeatable and sustainable” process to keep the queue humming.
“The closer we can get our process to 365 days, the closer we get to aligning the DPP study process with the MTEP study process,” he said, referencing MISO’s plan to better match MTEP planning with network upgrades necessary for interconnections.
Larson said that for the cutbacks to stick, interconnection customers need to ready their generation projects as much as possible before entering the queue.
“MISO alone cannot reach the reduction goal,” he said. “In order to succeed in this effort, every entity needs to identify internal efficiency opportunities.”
