Midwest Grid Operator Beats Its Own Record, but the Work Is Not Done Yet

Midwest grid operator Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) just approved the largest investment in transmission in U.S. history, beating its own prior record that was approved in July 2022. The planned transmission package, approved on December 12 and serving customers in the MISO North states (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin), will deliver huge financial benefits-up to a whopping $101 billion-and improved reliability while allowing as much as 100 gigawatts (GW) of new clean energy and batteries to connect to the grid.

MISO's transmission infrastructure package includes three portfolios. The Tranche 2.1 portfolio will expand the region's grid so that it can reliably move power across states as demand increases, driven by economic growth. This robust grid will offer flexibility and resilience during extreme weather emergencies and support the shift to clean energy resources, as planned by many states in the MISO North subregion.

The second group of transmission lines along MISO's border with Southwest Power Pool (SPP), the Joint Targeted Interconnection Queue (JTIQ) portfolio, has been approved to enable around 28.6 GW of new generation resources located near this border area to connect to the grid more quickly and at lower cost. The U.S. Department of Energy recognized the unique and groundbreaking approach of the JTIQ studyand its resulting portfolio with a grant that will reduce costs to new connecting generators by about a third. The third group consists of local projects identified by each transmission owner in the MISO territory that are needed to serve new loads and maintain reliability at the local level.

What benefits will this transmission plan bring?

• Savings: Customers will be big winners again. The Tranche 2.1 portfolio of lines will provide at least $2 in benefits for every dollar spent. The new transmission lines are estimated to generate between $51.7 and $101 billion in reliability and other economic benefits at a cost of $21.8 billion, such as enabling the development of low-cost wind and solar resources and delivering that power to consumers. Among these benefits are direct savings to households, amounting to tens of billions of dollarsover the next several decades.

• Reliability: This portfolio of lines is all about preventing the cost and risks associated with future grid outages, which are becoming more common due to increasingly extreme weather and rising power demands. Avoiding blackouts requires flexibility to reroute electricity around overloaded lines or to tap supply from places unaffected by extreme weather. These new lines will provide exactly this: They will increase the amount of power conveyed over long distances and provide more options for avoiding overloaded lines that risk grid failure.

  Regional transmission in MISO has already shown its value during extreme weather events. In February 2021, Winter Storm Uri resulted in $80 to $130 billion in financial losses and more than 200 deathswhen the strained electricity grid could not provide enough heat. But MISO had a better story during that storm. MISO had approved a large regional transmission plan in 2011 called the Multi-Value Projects, most of which were built and serving customers by 2021. These Multi-Value Project lines kept the lights on (and the heat flowing) in MISO regions during Winter Storm Uri while also allowing MISO to provide extra energy to its neighbors in the South. As Renuka Chatterjee, vice president of operations at MISO, said, "I don't know what would have happened without [the Multi-Value Projects]."

  Transmission is critical to reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving this increased extreme weather. A model completed by Princeton University found that, in order to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, the size of the transmission grid must at least double from 2021 levels.

• Jobs and clean energy: MISO's new transmission grid will be an economic powerhouse, supporting about 876,000 jobs overall. Up to 130,000 of these jobs relate to building the lines, including both direct construction jobs as well as the indirect jobs created at local businesses. The transmission lines will also open the door to almost 100 gigawatts of additional solar, wind, battery, and renewables plus storage projects-enough to power 23.4 million homes-in order to proceed, creating the other 746,000 jobs.

Long-range transmission planning is a must to ensure the grid is ready for the future

Robust transmission system planning is critical to improving reliability and ensuring customers have access to low-cost generation. MISO has consistently excelled in transmission planning-engaging a broad group of stakeholders and conducting transparent, detailed analysis of the region's evolving energy needs to maximize regional benefits. The most recent approval continues MISO's leadership role, one that provided an example to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission when it required that all transmission providers engage in comprehensive long-range transmission planning. Other regional transmission organizations are already following MISO's lead, with SPP just approving the largest transmission plan in its historyand ISO New England kicking off a long-term transmission planning process in close collaboration with state partners. To MISO's east, PJM is working to develop a long-range transmission planning process which, if successful, could help it ensure reliability during stressed grid conditions and reduce consumer costs.

This historic effort and plan are made possible by MISO staff and stakeholders' consistent and diligent engagement with states and partners, as well as extensive work by MISO staff to analyze needs and develop transmission solutions with expansive regional support.

What's next?

• Community input on transmission line routing: Before any of the Tranche 2.1 lines are built, there will be ample opportunity for community input. The utility in charge of each project will hold open houses where people can see graphics showing possible routes, voice their concerns, and make suggestions. The utility then considers this feedback and ultimately must get the approval of the state utilities commission. The whole process can take multiple years but may be less if the route uses an existing right-of-way.

• What about MISO South? This portfolio doesn't address the South, right? There's an urgent need for long-range transmission lines to help deliver reliability and lower-cost power to customers in the southern states of MISO: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. MISO hasn't extended its transmission planning effort to those states yet, and bill payers are losing out. Monopoly utility Entergy profits from the status quo, as inadequate regional transmission protects Entergy's fossil generation from competition by lower-cost resources.

• More work ahead on the grid of the future: MISO has already indicated that additional transmission investment will be needed soon to address increasing load growth driven by data centers and other economic development. MISO's commitment to ongoing, proactive planning will ensure that the Midwest has the most updated grid possible, supporting reliability for customers and utility plans for clean, low-cost energy resources.

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