Volts podcast: when transmission planning actually goes well

A long-range transmission plan just announced by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, or MISO, lays out a roadmap for $10 billion worth of investment in some 2,000 miles of new transmission lines, potentially unlocking more than 50 gigawatts of renewable energy. In this episode, attorney Lauren Azar celebrates this win and traces the years of work and advocacy that went into it.

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Text transcript:

David Roberts

Volts subscribers are well aware that the US, like most places, badly needs more long-distance power lines. Such lines unlock the potential of regions where renewable energy is abundant but people are scarce. They lower system costs for all customers on the grid. They make the grid more reliable and resilient.

However, it is incredibly difficult to build these lines. The process is a bureaucratic tangle, with ubiquitous controversies over how to allocate costs and benefits, and the pace of building is woefully short of what will be needed to help the US hit its carbon emissions targets.

But a ray of sunshine pierced that generally gloomy situation last week, when the market monitor of the midwest wholesale electricity market — the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, or MISO — announced the results of its Long-Range Transmission Planning Initiative. It laid out a roadmap that would involve $10 billion worth of investment in some 2,000 miles of new transmission lines, which MISO anticipates could unlock more than 50 gigawatts of pent-up renewable energy.

To someone like me, so accustomed to stories of failure around transmission, it came as a bit of a bolt from the blue. But it is, in fact, the result of years of long, steady work by advocates, stakeholders, and experts — including my guest today.

Lauren Azar is a longtime attorney and consultant working in the electricity industry. During her time as a lawyer, she has also worked as a senior advisor to the US secretary of energy on electricity grid issues, a commissioner on the Wisconsin Public Service Commission, and president of the Organization of MISO States, which was deeply involved in the last round of transmission planning in MISO. There's nobody in a better position to explain what has just happened in MISO and what it means for the larger field of transmission planning, so I'm extremely excited to welcome her on to the pod today.

Lauren Azar, thank you for coming to Volts.

Lauren Azar

Thank you, David. Looking forward to this discussion.

David Roberts

It's rare I get to discuss positive transmission news, so this is exciting. As I said, I think listeners know the basics about why transmission is good, why we need more of it, and why it's so difficult to build. So let's take a few steps back and just talk about MISO, where this happened. So maybe just start by — MISO is what they call a Regional Transmission Operator, an RTO, which means it has an area that includes a bunch of utilities within it, and it runs the wholesale electricity market in that region and plans transmission in that region. So tell us a little bit about where MISO is and what and who it includes.

Lauren Azar

Sure. So MISO stands for the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, and they operate the transmission grid from Manitoba, Canada, all the way down south to Louisiana and Mississippi. In addition to operating the transmission grid, they also run an energy market which decides what generators are going to run to deliver electricity to customers. And under federal law as an RTO, they are also obligated to ensure that the grid itself is able to deliver sufficient electricity to customers. And so that is where the transmission planning comes in.

MISO actually does transmission planning all of the time, every year, but it's smaller scale. It's these long-range transmission planning processes that don't happen very often. And the result of some LRTP planning happened and was approved last week.

David Roberts

Right. And so this is a process. MISO includes a bunch of states, a bunch of utilities. They're varied in terms of not only their resource mix but in terms of their goals. and aspirations, and political character. So it's quite a milage they're dealing with there. So let's talk a little bit about the process. So what is MISO setting out to do with this process, and who gets to be involved in the process?

Lauren Azar

MISO with regards to long-range planning, and that's planning for 20 years out. MISO uses what is called the "Strategic Foresight Process", which essentially what MISO does is it creates a series of hypothetical worlds for 20 years out, and then figures out what kind of transmission grid would be needed for those hypothetical worlds and what you are looking for. And those hypothetical worlds are called scenarios, or MISO calls them futures. And usually, in this process you try to get plausible bookended futures, so one that's more tepid and then one that's aggressive, and you try to then design solutions that would work in both of those bookends.

David Roberts

With the electricity industry changing so quickly to even imagine 20 years out, there's some element of absurdity to it, like we have no idea. So as I was reading MISO's futures, they got "Future 1", where everybody sort of meets their stated plans and goals, and then they range up to a future where there's super aggressive decarbonization and super aggressive electrification, which raises demands. And my thought was, "that range between those two possible futures is so vast." How on earth do you plan a transmission system that even plausibly could answer the needs of both?

Lauren Azar

First of all, let me just say that the portfolio that was approved last week, unfortunately, was only based on "Future 1", which in my mind was a disappointment. But whenever you're dealing with plausible bookends, one of the things that you can think about, and I think MISO is thinking about, is how can one plan build on another plan? So for these long-range transmission planning processes, and I'm going to refer to this as the LRTP process, MISO has already indicated that it's going to involve four different steps. In other words, four different plans are going to come out, and the next one is going to come out and be approved in December 2023. Tranche 3 in December 2024, and we hope December 25 will result in Tranche 4.

David Roberts

And these different tranches will be divided up by time period or by region, by area.

Lauren Azar

The first three are divided by region. Tranches 1 and 2 are all in what was MISO Classic. So the states in Central MISO and Northern MISO. Tranche 3 is going to be in MISO South. And then Tranche 4 is going to increase the capacity exchange between MISO North and MISO South.

David Roberts

Interesting. So some exchange between regions.

Lauren Azar

Yes.

David Roberts

And so, as I think about the process of transmission planning and why it's so vexed in the US, one thing is j