There’s been a lot of chatter around MISO’s updated Reliability Imperative (RI) report. It was a topic of conversation at the winter policy summit of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC). FERC Commissioner Mark Christie talked about it during this year’s Gulf Coast Power Association MISO/SPP Regional Conference in New Orleans and multiple media outlets have reported on it.
If you are unfamiliar with the term “Reliability Imperative,” it is how MISO defines the shared responsibility we have with our members and states to collaboratively address the urgent and complex challenges impacting our grid. We talked about the need for urgency in a previous blog. Let’s talk about the need for greater collaboration.
The U.S. power grid faces increasingly complex challenges. These include, but are not limited to, supply chain issues, the pace at which renewable generation is coming online, and the speed at which existing generation is retiring. Failing to address these challenges now, poses a threat to future grid reliability.
Call to Action: We must work together and move faster
The most effective way to reduce these risks is through greater collaboration and coordinated effort. The updated Reliability Imperative report calls on MISO, its members and states to work together to:
- Refine generation resource plans across MISO by accelerating the addition of reliability attributes and moderating retirements to avoid undue reliability risk
- Maintain transition resources as reliability “insurance” until promising new technologies become viable at grid scale
- Identify areas of risk in which electricity providers, states and MISO must coordinate
The good news is we all know how to do this. And do it well. MISO and its stakeholders have made important progress under the Reliability Imperative in recent years. However, there is more work to do. The clock is ticking, and the risks are accelerating.
None of the work we face is easy. But it is necessary. The region’s 45 million people are counting on all of us — electricity providers, states, and MISO — to work together and get it right. Collaboration is our key to success.