More frequent extreme weather raises need for MISO Reliability Imperative: CEO

The increasing frequency of extreme weather events such as the mid-February winter storm has reinforced the Midcontinent Independent System Operator's Reliability Imperative initiatives affecting capacity markets and scarcity pricing, stakeholders learned during an April 20 Informational Forum.

MISO CEO John Bear noted that the 2010s had extreme weather events in six years, followed by more in 2020 and 2021.

For example, the February 2011 winter storm that hit the Southwest prompted a 4-GW load shed, affecting 3.2 million people, and the summer 2011 heat wave and drought brought a 12-hour power failure to the Southwest, affecting 2.7 million people.

The January 2014 polar vortex caused forced outages totaling 38 GW in the PJM Interconnection and 29 GW in MISO. Another such winter event in 2019 brought forced outages totaling 21 GW in PJM and 30 GW in MISO.

In 2020, California's heat wave and wildfire prompted rotating blackouts, and Hurricane Laura hit MISO's Gulf Coast region, resulting in a 500-MW load shed and massive transmission and distribution system destruction.

The mid-February 2021 storm resulted in rotating outages in some parts of the MISO South region and extreme energy prices. For example, Chicago City-gates spot gas increased six-fold from January's average of $2.52/MMBtu, to an average in February of $15.57/MMBtu, before dropping back to $2.48/MMBtu in March.

Systemwide real-time locational marginal prices increased by more than two and a half times from January's $23.64/MWh to February's $61.38/MWh before dropping back down to $24.07/MWh in March.

"This event illustrates the need for urgency in completing the work of responding to the Reliability Imperative," Bear said in his written presentation.

Q2, Q3 filings planned

MISO's Reliability Imperative efforts include a redefinition of the power market, long-range transmission planning, a reassessment of uncertainties in the operations systems of the future, and market system enhancements to address resource adequacy in constrained areas.

MISO is working with stakeholders on several filings at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to address some of these issues, with plans to submit filings in the second and third quarter of 2021, "targeting a 2023-24 planning year implementation for key resource adequacy enhancements," Bear said.

These priority items including reforming MISO's Planning Resource Auction capacity market process to incorporate "sub-annual planning;" accrediting resources to ensure they can meet power demands in extreme weather; and upgrading MISO's scarcity pricing mechanism.

One factor influencing these plans is MISO's growing wind fleet, which hit a new record peak of 20.7 GW, 29% of load, on March 30, according to a written presentation by Jessica Lucas, MISO's reliability coordination director.

Wind supplied 18.4% of MISO's energy in March, up from February's 12% and second only to November 2020's 18.9%. In March 2020, wind supplied 14.5% of the total.