MISO Is About to Turn Miserable and It's Because the Experts and Planners Have Dug Themselves A Big Capacity Hole

The Energy Bad Boys are doing yeoman’s work exposing the wretched situation we face down the road from today’s ‘climate crisis’ policing intended to enable the Big Green Grift. This recent post from the boys outlines it all regarding the situation within the electricity grid managed by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO).

The post is largely a series of 10 slides that are well worth examining, but it only takes two of them to get a grasp of the problem. This one provides some perspective on the size of the problem:

And, this one tells us how it happened to come about:

Yes, the virtue-signaling EPA and politically correct states are basically engineering their way to massive blackouts. Utility companies and MISO are going along with the dangerous game because they can pass along the costs of their mistakes to consumers. There is no accountability anywhere to be found; none whatsoever.

The boys summarize:

This results in a situation where there is more installed capacity on the MISO system, but there will be less accredited capacity that can be relied upon in future years…

If thermal retirements continue in MISO and new capacity additions are consistent with the three-year historical average of 2.3 gigawatts (GW) per year, MISO faces a potential capacity shortfall of 2.7 GW for the 2025/2026 planning year, and this could grow to 14.4 GW by planning year 2029/2030. For context, this would be the peak demand of the entire state of Minnesota or Wisconsin.

If 6.1 GW of new accredited capacity enters into service each year, or roughly 2.65 times more than the three-year historical average, there is a chance to avoid capacity shortfalls. That is, until MISO factors in the potential load growth from data centers and manufacturers.

MISO has not historically factored these potential load growth sources into its demand forecasts, but now grid planners have nearly doubled their 5-year peak load forecasts compared to the previous year. By 2039, peak demand could grow from slightly more than 140 GW to 200 GW in the upper range for data centers forecast.

Data center load growth could compound resource adequacy problems in the near term, too. The OMS Survey indicates that large spot-load additions could increase the planning year 2025/2026 capacity shortfall to 8.5 GW, and the planning year 2029/2030 shortfall could reach more than 30 GW.

Obviously, something will have to give. The region will either need to scale back the scheduled retirements of coal, nuclear, and natural gas power plants to meet this rising demand or forego the economic growth that would accompany the increase in electricity consumption.

This reality exposes the silliness of arguments that rely heavily on demand response—or, as we like to call it, the opposite of Motel 6: We’ll turn the lights out on you—to keep the grid solvent. Not consuming energy comes at a cost, and states like Michigan are currently bending over backward to get these energy-hungry projects.

Unless MISO states get their energy policies in order, there won’t be any room at the inn.

How do we get into these messes? By letting the loudest voices of tiny minorities become the political inertia for stupid ideas. There are always bureaucrats and politicians ready to latch onto any stupid idea to further their own ambitions and addictions to power. The ‘climate crisis’ is just such a cause and look at what’s happening as states, the EPA, utilities and ISOs have all fallen for it, even there’s no one who knows how much our climate is really warming or how much might be due to natural causes.

This is an absolutely incredible demonstration of how flawed human nature really is. We invent problems to solve them and then invent solutions that are worse than anything we really imagined. It’s as if we decided a man can be a woman by merely saying it, only to beat the hell out of a real woman in a boxing match; all brought about by human rights worries. Worse, we do nothing about it until the utter shock of where our foolishness has taken us, and hits us square in the jaw. That’s where MISO is today, on the way to a place called miserable.

#Power #MISO #Energy #Electricitf #Solar #Wind #AccreditedCapacity #Blackouts