NEW ORLEANS — Calls to consider a dissolved or weakened Inflation Reduction Act alongside appeals for stronger MISO South planning epitomized the tough situation and unsteady political climate MISO finds itself in as it tries to establish transmission planning expectations.  

In a transmission planning futures teleconference March 19, MISO revealed it plans to proceed in its modeling as if tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act are a safe bet. However, MISO staff said they would consider performing sensitivities on the side if that federal funding is eliminated or diminished.  

MISO is revising the trio of 20-year futures scenarios it uses to plan transmission. The RTO has said it must incorporate more aggressive load growth and would create a fourth scenario specially designed to study the footprint if frayed supply chains continue to present an obstacle to new generation construction.  

WPPI Energy’s Steve Leovy asked whether MISO is considering creating a separate resource expansion model should the IRA fall. 

MISO Senior Manager of Policy and Regulatory Planning RaeLynn Asah said the sensitivities would produce “modified” and “miniature” resource expansion directions that wouldn’t be tested for resource adequacy. But she stressed that MISO hasn’t decided whether it will add the additional study step.  

Asah said MISO typically uses sensitivities to “test the durability” of its resource expansion assumptions.  

“There are a lot of rules and laws that appear to be rolling back this year,” said Kavita Maini, representing MISO industrial customers.  

“As of right now, as of March 1, the IRA is in place, so we’re incorporating it into the model,” Asah said, explaining that MISO’s future modeling relies on a “snapshot” in time. MISO began building the futures models on March 1.  

Asah said MISO “has no idea” how the IRA will hold up or how funding cancellations or claw backs might be challenged in court.  

Multiple stakeholders pointed out the IRA’s demise is not as improbable as it was last year.  

Mississippi Public Service Commission consultant Bill Booth asked if MISO could include an IRA downfall in its new, fourth future that’s meant to contemplate long-term supply chain delays and sluggish generation construction.  

“I think this will have a major impact on the generation that’s sited,” Booth said. “You have to question which variables MISO wants to include and which variables MISO wants to ignore.”  

MISO Director of Strategic Initiatives and Assessments Jordan Bakke said MISO is confronted with uncertainties at every turn in its futures planning. He said that’s why MISO’s futures include a range of possible realities. Bakke also said MISO wants to capture what it knows today, which includes an intact IRA.  

“We have not decided which of the futures we will use in expansion planning,” Executive Director of Transmission Planning Laura Rauch added.  

MISO plans to focus on its new, fourth future in an upcoming April workshop. Another May workshop will focus on resource expansion assumptions and how resources would be dispersed across the footprint.  

Asah asked members to submit their most up-to-date information on planned generation retirements to MISO. The RTO will incorporate those dates in its futures. 

Spotlight on MISO South Planning

Stakeholders’ advice to MISO to rethink the IRA’s place in the futures comes as the RTO and its board are fielding calls to action for a long-term transmission plan in MISO South. The two bids appear to come from opposing sides of the political spectrum.  

After MISO completes a futures revamp over 2025, it will use them to plan another long-range transmission plan (LRTP) portfolio for MISO Midwest, making a MISO South LRTP portfolio years away while the Midwest region would be the focus of three, multibillion-dollar portfolios within six years.  

At MISO’s March Board Week, Windy Beck, of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, made a plea for in-depth MISO South planning. She said the region deserves the same planning attention paid to the Midwest. Beck said she’s seen no evidence from MISO that Entergy and other South transmission owners’ billions in annual Transmission Expansion Plan (MTEP) projects are the most cost-effective and efficient projects for the grid.  

During the March 13 board meeting in New Orleans, CEO John Bear pushed back on the perception that the RTO is not doing anything on the planning front for MISO South and focusing all planning attention on MISO Midwest.  

Bear said planners have “rolled up their sleeves” to ensure the transmission solutions put forward in the South as part of the MTEPs are “efficient, reliable and at the lowest cost.”  

However, the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Sam Gomberg said the member-submitted project ideas of MISO South are no substitute for the broad analysis completed under a long-term planning exercise. 

He said MISO South desperately needs the added resiliency, reliability, cost savings and delivered clean energy like the billions in Midwestern long-range lines will provide.