MISO expects the savings it delivers to members under a resource sharing pool to more than triple within 20 years, according to a new, forward-looking value proposition it debuted earlier this month.
The RTO said that by 2030, it will provide $4.3 billion to $5.8 billion in annual estimated benefits and $11.6 billion to $14.3 billion by 2040. The study estimates the current 11:1 benefit-to-cost ratio, based on $3.5 billion annual savings, will more than double to 26:1. (See “MISO Sees Members’ Savings Increase,” MISO Board Meets Amid RA Concerns, Emergency Alerts.)
During a Friday teleconference with stakeholders, MISO business analyst Savannah Miller said much of the benefits stem from a reduced need for additional assets because of capacity sharing and an optimized dispatch of renewable resources. She said the benefits will jump as decarbonization picks up.
MISO used a combination of its most conservative transmission planning future and the 2021 regional resource assessment, which considered its members’ decarbonization goals, for its long-term benefit analysis. (See MISO Resource Assessment: 140 GW Needed Within 20 Years.)
That data was compared against a scenario that assumed MISO had never been formed and utilities would have to meet their entire energy needs with their own generation or through bilateral contracts.
The grid operator concluded that its long-range transmission projects will “enable a more efficient utilization of the changing generation within MISO into the future.” The RTO assumes the $10.3 billion portfolio of 345-kV projects will come online by about 2030.
Miller said MISO expects to have a “completely different” resource mix by 2040. She said while staff know the energy transition will occur with or without it, the grid operator’s services will help members more easily access a reduced carbon fleet.
Mississippi Public Service Commission consultant Nick Puga said he wondered whether MISO’s base case was realistic enough. He suggested utilities would have banded together in some fashion to better share resources had MISO never been formed.
Staff said they simply used calculations with and without MISO calculations and didn’t think it was appropriate to hypothesize on what would have happened if MISO wasn’t formed.
The value prediction on resource sharing comes at a time when MISO is telling its members to bring more energy online or risk future load shed. (See MISO Describes Bleak RA Future, Stakeholders Push Back.)
MISO has issued a string of hot weather alerts, capacity advisories and conservative operations instructions since mid-June, mostly for MISO South.
Last week, both Alliant Energy and WEC Energy Group postponed plans to retire three coal-fired resources in Wisconsin by at least 18 months, citing tight supply in MISO Midwest. However, Consumers Energy’s new integrated resource plan approved will accelerate the retirement of its J.H. Campbell coal plant in western Michigan to 2025, 15 years earlier than originally planned.
The grid operator’s new market system, expected to be in service by late 2024, will house more nuanced types of wholesale market participation that better accommodate distributed and intermittent resources.
