CARMEL, Ind. — As the hot weather continues to extend across much of the central U.S., MISO is closely monitoring and responding to the challenging operating conditions stemming from high electricity demand. MISO has already taken actions to enhance the availability of resources and to put local utilities on alert that conditions may require additional actions including utilizing emergency operating procedures.
“Using emergency operating procedures is typical during challenging grid conditions,” said Jessica Lucas, MISO’s executive director – system operations. “Issuing an emergency declaration is an important step when it comes to keeping the power flowing. It provides operators access to resources that are unavailable under normal grid conditions.”
MISO declared a Hot Weather Alert, Capacity Advisory and Conservative Operations for most of this week to alert members and neighboring grid operators that tight conditions are expected. These declarations require utilities to delay any discretionary equipment maintenance and to prepare emergency resources. If necessary, operators can implement additional emergency steps to maintain reliability. These include, but are not limited to, emergency pricing, emergency energy purchases and calling on emergency-only generation resource reserves. MISO and its member utilities also continually prepare for peak periods through seasonal assessments and regular drills.
“MISO continues to focus on the reliability of the bulk electric system by efficiently operating the resources our members make available to us,” said JT Smith, executive director – market operations at MISO. “Our operators will use all of the tools available to keep the power on this summer.”
Last week, MISO reached a year-to-date market peak load of 118 GW and is predicting a new year-to-day peak load of 122 GW on Tuesday, June 21. MISO’s all-time record peak load is 127 GW set on July 20, 2011.
This heat event comes as the MISO Region is increasingly tight on generation capacity. As noted in this year’s Planning Resource Auction, MISO’s North and Central regions have a combined capacity shortfall of approximately 1.2 GW (to meet load plus reserves). MISO’s Summer Assessment also confirmed these tight conditions, which increases the likelihood of MISO needing to rely more heavily on emergency procedures and non-firm imports from neighboring regions.
MISO is addressing these challenges through the comprehensive Reliability Imperative initiative—the shared responsibility that states, utilities, members, and MISO have to address the complex challenges increasingly threatening electric reliability in the region.
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