Infocast’s inaugural Midcontinent Clean Energy summit provided panelists a pulpit for critiquing MISO’s interconnection queue setup as it strains under the weight of hundreds of gigawatts intended to further fleet shift and meet load growth.

MISO's Todd Hillman described the pressure cooker environment of escalating data center demand, a precarious reliability situation and an overwhelmingly large interconnection queue at Infocast’s inaugural Midcontinent Clean Energy Summit.

MISO said its 123-GW collection of projects in the 2023 queue cycle will be subject to another delay into early 2025 as it pauses to see if a tech startup can help it better scale interconnection studies.

A recent webinar from Texas-based analytics firm Aurora Energy Research drew attention to promising and troubling trends alike in MISO’s interconnection queue process.

MISO plans to pursue a more straightforward, 50% peak load megawatt cap to limit the number of generator interconnection requests it will accept annually.

Industry leaders, experts, policymakers and regulators gathered near the nation’s capital to discuss how recent FERC orders will affect regional transmission planning, cost allocation, permitting and other issues.

MISO’s system is at the mercy of faster interconnections of new resources and retirement delays, executives said in a quarterly address to the board and stakeholders.

The CAISO board unanimously approved the ISO’s Interconnection Process Enhancements proposal, the product of more than a year of stakeholder engagement and troubleshooting.

FERC authorized an exception to MISO’s interconnection rights transfer process, allowing two Xcel Energy subsidiaries to cooperate on a replacement of a coal-fired plant with a solar farm.