MISO no longer faces a capacity shortfall next year, the RTO announced in releasing the results of its newest survey with the Organization of MISO States.
MISO said its newest results show a minimum 1.7-GW surplus for 2016 as a result of reduced load forecasts and an increase in resources committed to serving MISO load. The 2014 survey had projected a 2.3-GW shortfall next year.
The new survey predicts a regional surplus of 1.7 to 2.3 GW (representing reserve margins of 15.6 to 16.1%) for 2016, with sufficient zonal surpluses to offset zonal shortfalls through 2019. “Additional actions needed to ensure sufficient resources beyond 2019,” MISO said.
“The big change is in the increase of committed resources. There’s also a decrease in the reserve requirement as we continue to refine the calculations on exploiting the diversity of the footprint to minimize everybody’s obligation in reserves,” MISO Executive Vice President Clair Moeller said during a conference call with stakeholders Friday. “So going into 2016 we’re feeling very confident that we’re in good shape in terms of sufficient resources.”
The RTO said the survey projects an average annual load growth rate of 0.8% over the next five years, equal to the 2014 survey. However, because 2015 load forecasts were below previous projections, the growth was from a lower base level.
“At this point in time we see a shortage of physical machines to serve the load in 2020, premised on that 0.8% load forecast distributed across the footprint,” Moeller said. “So the question we’re trying to answer here is how tight will capacity supplies be in those out years so people can begin to make their decisions between purchase and build and demand-side management and whatever else they need to do to ensure they bring sufficient resources to the resource pool in these out years.”
The forecasts also benefited from a 0.6-GW reduction in reserve requirements.
While the region will have sufficient capacity through 2019, according to the survey, Zone 6 (Indiana and Kentucky) and Zone 7 (Lower Michigan) will have shortfalls next year.
Generation owners, load-serving entities and regulators have been working to mitigate those problems, Moeller said. “We still have confidence they’ll figure out how to do that.”
By 2020, the survey forecasts regional capacity ranging from a surplus of 0.5 GW to a shortage of as much as 1.8 GW.
The RTO released its survey at its Annual Meeting in Milwaukee on Wednesday. Moeller said the survey would be explained in detail at the Supply Adequacy Working Group’s July 9 meeting.
