MISO plans to subdivide its annual capacity auction by seasons to better manage reliability risks caused by renewables’ growing share of the resource mix.

Fall in MISO was a study in record wind production, but it came with a price, as it produced more than half of the quarter’s real-time congestion.

In an effort to avoid an increase in emergency operating conditions, MISO plans to develop a new direction for its capacity auction.

MISO will evaluate the merits of defining new seasonal reliability criteria and implementing a sub-annual capacity construct, stakeholders learned.

Stakeholders are divided on whether MISO has conducted enough analysis to justify adopting seasonal capacity auctions and loss-of-load expectation studies.

Utility executives urged MISO to prepare for the imminent change sweeping the grid with the increased adoption of renewable and distributed resources.

FERC rejected requests to change PJM’s capacity market rules to accommodate seasonal resources.

MISO is contemplating creating a seasonal design for its resource adequacy construct to manage potential reliability risks outside of the summer months.

For the first time, MISO has found a loss-of-load risk outside of summer months, and said it may be more evidence for seasonal capacity supplies.

MISO now cautiously estimates that the benefits of a seasonal capacity auction would outweigh potential drawbacks.