The Midcontinent ISO on May 8 shared its summer readiness assessment outlining the forecast demand, generation capacity and weather expectations for the upcoming season.
“While sufficient resources are projected to meet anticipated demand, elevated risk remains due to the potential for extreme weather events and the continued decline in accredited capacity,” it said.
This summer, peak demand could reach nearly 123 GW, with about 138 GW of regularly available generation expected across the MISO footprint.
“Part of our value proposition is maximizing existing resources to maintain reliability across a large, diverse region,” said Jessica Lucas, MISO’s executive director – system operations. “At some point we find ourselves in need of every available resource to keep the power flowing across our footprint almost every summer. The continued reduction in accredited capacity makes it much more challenging, especially during heat waves, hurricanes or other extreme weather events.”
The assessment highlights the need for new capacity additions to keep pace with decreased accreditation, scheduled outages and accelerated retirements.
MISO said it continues advancing its Reliability Imperative efforts by collaborating with stakeholders to implement operational and market reforms “that address the evolving system needs driven by the energy transition and its member utilities’ and states’ clean energy targets.
“We’re working continuously to monitor emerging risks and operational trends across the industry,” Lucas continues. “We leverage past lessons-learned to enhance our seasonal preparation efforts, including analyses of different supply and demand scenarios, and training and coordination with member operators. Learning from our experiences during emergency conditions gives us valuable insight on how to manage new challenges.”
MISO prepares for extreme weather by declaring alerts and advisories – sometimes several days in advance.
These actions allow MISO and its members to identify all available generation and known transmission issues prior to the event.
For more information, see the 2025 Summer Readiness Workshop presentation materials available on the MISO website.
