MISO this week said it intends to sunset its longstanding stakeholder group dedicated to the grid operator’s loss-of-load expectation calculations.

The RTO would like to retire the stakeholder-led Loss of Load Expectation Working Group (LOLEWG) at the end of the year and fold its work into the Resource Adequacy Subcommittee (RASC), MISO’s Lynn Hecker told stakeholders during a LOLEWG teleconference Wednesday.

The LOLEWG is more than a decade old and helps prepare MISO’s annual loss-of-load expectation study, which generates planning reserve margin requirements for load-serving entities, zonal reliability requirements, and zonal import and export capabilities. Those limits are used in MISO’s capacity auction.

The sunset news comes as MISO is pursuing seasonal reliability targets as the footprint faces a more pronounced wintertime loss-of-load risk that could eventually top summertime risk. MISO’s internal analysis shows that renewable penetration and electrification adoption will push the region to become exclusively winter peaking by 2035.

Clean Grid Alliance’s Natalie McIntire said she was worried stakeholders might lose their forum to provide detailed input on such technical studies. She said she hoped loss-of-load topics wouldn’t be glossed over in RASC meetings with MISO’s new “post-only” agenda item format, in which the RTO publishes information but doesn’t prepare a presentation.

“I think the idea of a technical work group is helpful, and I don’t want to lose the … dialogue and discussion,” McIntire said.

Hecker said that by sunsetting the working group, MISO would end duplicate loss-of-load conversations in both the LOLEWG and the RASC. MISO will reserve time for loss-of-load discussion in the RASC only if the subjects are deemed noteworthy, he said.

“The short answer is, ‘it depends on the importance of the topic,’” Hecker said.

LOLEWG Chair James Peters asked if stakeholders could reconvene the working group if they think the RASC isn’t adequately covering loss-of-load topics.

MISO customer relations said stakeholders, with approval from the stakeholder-led Steering Committee, could always create a new task team, working group or task force devoted to loss-of-load expectations.

The RTO will hold another discussion in July on possibly sunsetting the group by the end of 2022.