Infocast’s inaugural Midcontinent Clean Energy summit provided panelists a pulpit for critiquing MISO’s interconnection queue setup as it strains under the weight of hundreds of gigawatts intended to further fleet shift and meet load growth.

MISO's Todd Hillman described the pressure cooker environment of escalating data center demand, a precarious reliability situation and an overwhelmingly large interconnection queue at Infocast’s inaugural Midcontinent Clean Energy Summit.

MISO said its 123-GW collection of projects in the 2023 queue cycle will be subject to another delay into early 2025 as it pauses to see if a tech startup can help it better scale interconnection studies.

MISO plans to pursue a more straightforward, 50% peak load megawatt cap to limit the number of generator interconnection requests it will accept annually.

MISO’s system is at the mercy of faster interconnections of new resources and retirement delays, executives said in a quarterly address to the board and stakeholders.

FERC authorized an exception to MISO’s interconnection rights transfer process, allowing two Xcel Energy subsidiaries to cooperate on a replacement of a coal-fired plant with a solar farm.

MISO said new queue entries must wait while it takes another swing at imposing an annual megawatt cap on its interconnection queue.

PJM completed the first phase of studies for 306 generation interconnection requests in the transition to its new interconnection process.

MISO announced that 123 GW of new generation spread across 600 applications are vying to enter its generator interconnection queue under the 2023 cycle.