CARMEL, Ind. — MISO said it will design an expedited resource adequacy study process so generation projects in the interconnection queue that are needed for capacity sufficiency will get grid treatment sooner.
MISO Director of Resource Utilization Andy Witmeier said MISO “needs a way to get generation online faster” because its capacity forecasts warn of shortfalls within a few years. The RTO told stakeholders to expect more details in coming weeks on how it will expedite the queue approval process for generation needed for resource adequacy.
“We really need generators to get a [generator interconnection agreement] faster to get them online to meet resource adequacy needs that are coming in the next three to five years,” Witmeier told stakeholders at a Nov. 13 Planning Advisory Committee meeting.
MISO said the expedited avenue for RA projects would be a temporary measure and would be discontinued when MISO’s queue processing is cleaned up enough that urgent projects can reach the construction phase quicker. Witmeier said MISO may retire the study process sometime in 2028 or 2029, when queue processing might be closer to one year instead of the current three to four years.
MISO pledged to craft an express lane for priority generation projects after it finalized a proposal to place an annual megawatt cap on its interconnection queue cycles.
The queue cap proposal is set to go before FERC this month without an exemption for generation projects that state regulators deem essential to a solvent supply. Some regulatory staff have implied states cannot support a cap without a regulator exemption. (See MISO Queue MW Cap to be Filed Sans Regulator Exemption for RA Generation Projects.)
The regulator exemption “is not the solution that would get projects studied in a matter of months instead of years and get them started on building to meet those RA needs,” Witmeier said. He explained that the scrapped exemption only guaranteed RA projects’ entry into the queue and didn’t address the queue’s “accumulating backlog, or time it takes to do studies,” leaving critical generation projects languishing in the queue for three to four years.
Witmeier said MISO will ask stakeholders to suggest “the proper gates” that will get a generation project expedited treatment. He said MISO might consider projected zonal capacity deficiencies or known load growth.
“I myself want to limit this process to known, ready projects that need to be built,” Witmeier said.
Witmeier said the study structure could take a page from MISO’s expedited project avenue available to transmission projects that need to begin before MISO’s annual approval of its Transmission Expansion Plans (MTEPs). MISO also could use MTEP modeling to inform studies, he said.
Invenergy’s Arash Ghodsian asked if the resource adequacy fast track is a reaction to FERC’s Order 2023, which aims to streamline grid operators’ interconnection processes.
“It’s a reaction to reality,” Witmeier responded. He said MISO years ago aspired to shorten queue processing time down to a calendar year; instead, the sheer volume of projects coming in cycle after cycle has spawned numerous project dropouts, queue restudies and a wait time that can last as long as high school.
Ghodsian said he harbored concerns that the new framework might lead to “queue jumping on either interconnection customers’ side or the transmission owners’ side.”
Witmeier said MISO could limit eligibility to load-serving entities’ projects that need to be commercially operable in the next three to five years and are recognized by regulatory authorities as essential to resource adequacy.
MISO will host two stakeholder workshops on how it will craft expedited resource adequacy studies on Nov. 18 and Dec. 6.
At last count, project proposals in MISO’s queue totaled about 300 GW, and projects that have signed generator interconnection agreements but are still unbuilt have grown to about 57 GW.
