By Amanda Durish Cook

ST. PAUL, Minn. — The MISO footprint didn’t come close to its forecasted summertime peak and is unlikely to hit its forecasted fall peak either. But ways to improve resource adequacy in a time of grid transformation were on the minds of those at MISO Board Week here.

Times a-Changin’

MISO’s interconnection queue is further evidence of the urgency of its resource availability and need (RAN) project, Richard Doying, president of market development strategy, told the Markets Committee of the Board of Directors on Sept. 17. RAN ideas currently include a 30-minute reserve product, a resource accreditation rethink, a seasonal capacity auction and a multiday forecast. (See MISO, Stakeholders Debate Merits of Seasonal Auction.)

Based on utility and state announcements, MISO forecasts wind and solar generation will overtake coal and natural gas. By 2030, wind and solar will total 30 to 35% of generation output, while natural gas and coal will have 29% and 24 to 29% shares, respectively. Nuclear’s contribution is projected to be nearly halved to 9%. In 2018, MISO reported a fuel mix of 48% coal, 26% gas, 16% nuclear and 7% wind and solar combined.

Proposed solar projects currently comprise 59 GW of MISO’s 101-GW interconnection queue. Wind generation has a 27-GW share, while natural gas-fired resources represent 9 GW. Storage resources, still nascent in MISO, total only 3 GW. No new nuclear generation is proposed in the queue.

“We do expect to see more storage,” Doying told the board, adding that MISO is particularly anticipating solar-and-storage hybrids.

“I think you can get the whole community behind this,” Director Baljit Dail said, commending the RTO on RAN’s catchphrase, “All hours matter.”

Dail compared it — in rhetoric only — to 2001’s No Child Left Behind Act. Since last year, MISO has said it needs to shift from its one-day-in-10-years loss-of-load expectation to an approach that accounts for different risks across all operating hours.

“We have not considered ‘No Hour Left Behind,’” Doying laughed.

Director Barbara Krumsiek compared the RAN effort to “changing a tire [while] going 60, 70 mph on the interstate.”

Director Trip Doggett asked if NERC appeared to be also shifting from its one-in-10 reliability standard.

“It is something that lots of other folks are looking at,” Doying said.

But WPPI Energy economist Valy Goepfrich was quick to remind leadership that RAN is merely studying whether MISO needs to pivot to an all-hours risk. She said it could turn out that preparations for a summer peak still cover reliability risks in every other operating hour of the year.

“We’re letting the data drive what the peak is,” she told the board.

“It’s still that one hour that we have to meet. The problem is we don’t know when that hour is any more. It used to be a warm day in July or August. Now that’s shifted,” MISO CEO Joh Bear explained at Thursday’s board meeting.

Peak Forecasts Averted

MISO Executive Director of Market Operations Shawn McFarlane predicted that the RTO won’t hit its forecasted 112-GW fall peak, saying the highest risks of September’s heat have passed. (See MISO Unruffled by Fall Supply-demand Outlook.)

“Right now, the highest load we’ve had is 107 GW on Sept. 7,” McFarlane said.

MISO also fell short of its nearly 125-GW forecast summer peak, instead experiencing a 121-GW summer peak July 19.

The RTO weathered a heat wave and a hurricane in July without reliability problems. It declared conservative operations on July 18 and issued an open-ended maximum generation capacity advisory effective 10 a.m. ET on July 19 as several Midwestern cities issued excessive heat warnings and heat indexes exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit even in Minneapolis. Both alerts were terminated July 20. MISO’s capacity advisories ask members to prepare for emergency conditions, ready load-modifying resources for a possible call-up and ensure resource availability is up to date in the RTO’s communication system.

On July 11, MISO declared a severe weather alert for its Gulf Coast region for July 12 to 15 as Tropical Storm Barry was forming over the gulf. MISO’s weather alerts ask that maintenance and testing on any critical transmission or generation system be deferred or canceled. The alert lasted through July 20 as Entergy mobilized crews to restore power in flooded portions of Louisiana.

Independent Market Monitor David Patton said the most exciting part of the summer occurred in eastern Texas on Aug. 13, when a transformer lost cooling in the West of the Atchafalaya Basin load pocket from 4 to 6 p.m.

“We were extremely close to shedding load; if there had been another contingency…” Patton trailed off.

Prices during the contingency spiked to $560/MWh, but just over the border in sunbaked ERCOT — which was experiencing high load — prices were $8,800/MWh

Patton said the area should have been more appropriately priced at about $4,000/MWh. He added that ERCOT prices had to be attractive to MISO members, who were prohibited from lending supply because of the RTO’s own reliability risks.

“The reliability situation was far more dire in MISO than in ERCOT,” Patton said.

He again called for MISO to “beef up” its emergency and shortage prices, especially for times when portions of the footprint are “on the verge of load shedding.”

“As we grow our intermittent sources, we’re going to see more shortages,” he warned.