MISO said Wednesday it will make a first attempt at a long-term resource forecast, taking into account its members’ evolving resource mix over a 20-year planning horizon.

“There’s a lot happening in the world around us,” Policy Studies Engineer Aditya Jayam Prabhakar said during a Resource Adequacy Subcommittee meeting. He listed the industry’s embrace of renewables, storage advancements, electrification and decarbonization. He said staff will attempt to “translate this evolution into resource forecasts.”

“Most utilities looked homogenous in the past, and now they’re divergent,” Jayam Prabhakar said. “Some will be solar-dominant and others will be wind-dominant.”

He also said some states and utilities have more aggressive emissions-reduction goals than others. MISO will aggregate the different resource plans and goals to come up with zonal models and discern which parts of the footprints might need more resource sharing.

The assessment will also identify which zones are “over-relying” on a single fuel type and might have supply gaps, Jayam Prabhakar said.

“It’s basically trying to get an understanding of all of the pieces from a resource standpoint,” he said.

Jayam Prabhakar said the study reports can help members make resource planning decisions. Scott Wright, the grid operator’s executive director of market strategy and design, said the assessment’s purpose is to “inform,” not create a MISO-imposed, region-wide integrated resource plan.

“It will definitely shed light on capabilities,” Wright said.

Customized Energy Solutions’ David Sapper thanked MISO for embarking on the assessment at a time when utilities and states are pursuing sundry retirements and resource additions.

“It’s not clear to me that all these disparate resource plans will add up to reliability,” he said. Sapper recommended the assessment highlight retirements that could be detrimental to reliability. He said MISO and members lack “any real mechanisms” on reliability coordination.

America’s Power CEO Michelle Bloodworth asked whether MISO would also incorporate “single points of disruptions” for fuel types, given the recent ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline system.

Jayam Prabhakar said staff would include those kinds of sensitivities. He said he would return to the subcommittee in the fall with more details on the assessment’s design.

South-to-Midwest Auction Flow

This year’s Planning Resource Auction (PRA) resulted in MISO Midwest importing cheaper capacity from the South and neighboring regions.

The Midwest imported 3,173 MW in the 2021/22 PRA. External zones lent 1,273 MW, while MISO South contributed 1,900 MW, the maximum it could under the South-to-Midwest transmission transfer limit.

Bumping up against the South-to-Midwest limit caused a $4.99/MW-day clearing-price separation.

The April PRA cleared MISO South zones, two months removed from emergency load shed orders, at just 1 cent/MW-day.

The Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas southern zones cleared at an all-time low of 1 cent/MW-day, while the Midwestern zones cleared at $5/MW-day. (See MISO Capacity Auction Values South Capacity at a Penny.)

Despite the low-priced supply, Eric Thoms, manager of capacity market administration, said this year’s offers were “roughly comparable” with MISO’s two previous capacity auctions.

The grid operator disqualified an energy efficiency resource from participation in this year’s auction. Thoms said staff disqualified the resource after they and the Independent Market Monitor conducted an energy efficiency audit on the resource. MISO does not reveal market participants that are barred from auction participation.