By Amanda Durish Cook

CARMEL, Ind. — While MISO sector representatives express uncertainty about the next stage in the evolution of the grid, they do think it will involve energy storage, distributed resources and heightened security measures.

But they’re hesitant to speculate about the size of future investments driven by the developments.

MISO Executive Director of Strategy Scott Wright last week said the RTO believes the grid is facing its biggest change “perhaps in a hundred years.” It envisions the grid becoming a two-way delivery system and generation becoming more distributed and intermittent, he said during a MISO “hot topic” discussion on the grid’s future during a Dec. 6 Advisory Committee meeting.

Staying ‘Happy’

Discussion facilitator Julia Johnson, president of regulatory advising firm Net Communications, opened the discussion with positivity, playing Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” music video and displaying screenshots featuring people dancing with transmission lines in the background.

MISO’s Advisory Committee members generally agreed that low bills are keeping customers content for now, but a changing resource mix will mean future grid investment. No stakeholders, however, are comfortable yet in guessing the cost or predicting what technology advances will reign.

“Consumers are happy because their electric bills are the lowest percentage of their income, I think, ever,” said Arkansas Public Service Commission Chair Ted Thomas. But he cautioned that consumers’ preference for renewables isn’t static in the market. “If you double electric bills and double unemployment, the number of customers willing to pay more for sustainability drops.”

Alcoa’s DeWayne Todd, representing MISO’s Eligible End Use Customers sector, said customers are generally happy and are demanding renewables for future pricing certainty and independence. However, while energy costs have decreased, the costs of transmission have “almost doubled.”

“I’ve seen my transmission percentage go from a whopping 7% to a whopping 10%,” said Wind on the Wires’ Beth Soholt of MISO’s Environmental sector. “What benefits does the grid provide to me? We need to make it clearer to our customers. I think the grid is the enabler of all of these choices and options. … I think there’s a misnomer that if you have the grid, you can’t do distributed energy options. The grid is the enabler; it ties it all together.”

‘FOG’

MISO’s Competitive Transmission Developers sector agreed that the ability of the transmission system to deliver will only become more important as customers use more types of generation. In written comments, the group warned that the energy industry may be undervaluing transmission: “Today … the transmission grid often goes unrecognized in planning and policy decision-making. This increases the risk of costly future outcomes, driven by repeated ‘just-in-time’ incremental grid investments.”

Northern Indiana Public Service Co.’s Paul Kelly said that while distribution-level changes are rapidly evolving, MISO has time to plan changes to the transmission system. He said NIPSCO is now training employees to be aware that generation installed at the distribution level may be live and not simply there for back-up purposes — a sign of the times.

“Making big bets right now about what the grid is going to look like is extremely fraught with risk,” Entergy’s Matt Brown said. “There’s definitely a balance to be struck between big-goal visions with big-goal price tags and making sure that our customers are served at the lowest reasonable cost.

“We need to realize that everyone at this table is thinking something that will prove to be wrong,” he added.

Dynegy’s Mark Volpe pointed out that, two years ago, MISO held a hot topic discussion in which members were certain the Clean Power Plan was going to become the law of the land. “None of us really know what the grid is going to look like. When you look at the phrase ‘future of the grid,’ if you shorten that up a bit and ignore the ‘the,’ you have ‘FOG.’”

Soholt also cautioned about the “cost of inaction,” where generation and transmission developers, after not adopting new technologies, will be faced with obsolescence or hurried investments.

Avangrid Renewables’ Adam Sokolski, of the Independent Power Producers sector, said MISO should look to its own interconnection queue to gauge future grid trends. “The queue is really the barometer of the grid.”

MISO’s queue currently contains about 60 GW of proposed generation, which includes about 30 GW of wind, 15 GW of solar, 12 GW of natural gas and 600 MW of other resources. The queue also holds about 140 MW of prospective battery storage capacity.

Predictions and Suggestions

The Environmental, Public Consumer Advocates and End Use Customers sectors, and sole Coordinating Member Manitoba Hydro, all predicted future penetration of clean energy, storage, distributed resources, demand-side management, home automation gadgets and energy efficiency.

End Use Customers expect that the growing prominence of demand management, self-generation, energy storage and a focus on environmental sustainability will afford customers “more independence from the utility.” Manitoba Hydro predicted use of coal will continue to decline “despite efforts to maintain its historical importance” and said state-originated carbon pricing may be enacted. The Consumer Advocates sector said it’s expecting microgrids and AC-DC transmission lines. The Transmission Owners sector said saturation of distributed resources will not be consistent across the footprint, grouped instead in states with distributed energy resource-friendly policies and incentives.

IPPs called for more customized interconnection procedures for a more diverse assortment of generation types. “MISO should be prepared to offer tailored interconnection processes based on operating parameters such as DER capability to inject energy onto the system vs. service limited to on-site only,” the sector wrote.

The one-in-10 planning standard may become obsolete as the grid and new technology accommodate a variety of energy resources that deliver energy on different schedules, Brown said. He contended that the most challenging circumstances may become a certain time of day rather than the hottest week of the summer.

“Maybe we’ll no longer plan for that one hour of that one day in August,” Brown said.

Manitoba Hydro predicted increasingly severe weather disturbances impacting the grid as well as increasingly critical cyber threats. TOs also expect security issues to increase as smart devices connect to the grid.

The Environmental sector said MISO could monitor grid reliability by using dynamic and predictive transmission line ratings, where operators see real-time data on line ratings. The sector also asked MISO to consider “the diversity exchange that could be gained” by developing transmission that connects MISO Midwest to MISO South, which would allow “MISO South states to have enhanced opportunities for economic development of new generation resources.”

NIPSCO’s Kelly pointed to Amazon’s parade of products, with some enjoying success while others have flopped, suggesting that experimental grid investment could follow a similar boom-and-bust pattern.