The Midcontinent Independent System Operator is checking in with stakeholders on a plan to invest US$10.4 billion in new transmission that would enable as much as 53 gigawatts of new wind, solar, hybrid, and stand-alone battery storage capacity.
“The transmission projects would provide $37 billion in benefits across MISO’s northern footprint over 20 years,” Utility Dive reports, citing a MISO staff presentation earlier this month. Those benefits would “outweigh the costs in each of the grid operator’s seven transmission zones in the region.”
Natalie McIntire, a technical and policy consultant with the Clean Grid Alliance, a renewable energy development trade group, called the investment “the first step” in a transmission buildout across MISO’s territory in the Midwestern and mid-Atlantic U.S. We think that they’re critically needed to support reliability as the utilities in the MISO footprint move towards cleaner resources,” she said.
The MISO board is expected to vote on the proposal in mid-July.
