Press Release

MISO report concludes much higher levels of renewables integration are achievable

CARMEL, Indiana (February 10, 2021) — The Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) today published the Renewable Integration Impact Assessment (RIIA), an analysis that evaluates increasing amounts of wind and solar resources within the MISO grid and the broader bulk electric system. RIIA represents the culmination of more than four years of analysis as well as significant input from stakeholders.

RIIA will inform MISO’s Response to the Reliability Imperative, the broad range of efforts MISO is pursuing to ensure the system remains reliable as the region’s generation and transmission resources continue to evolve.  To better understand the impacts of this evolution, MISO developed the RIIA as an informational study to identify complexity inflection points associated with increasing levels of renewable integration. The analysis found that significantly higher levels of renewables penetration can be achieved, but it will require planning and considerable regional cooperation to cost-effectively accomplish.

“MISO, our members and the entire industry are poised on the precipice of great change as we are being asked to rapidly integrate far more renewable resources,” said MISO’s President and Chief Operating Officer Clair Moeller. “Given our regional Reliability Imperative, MISO must act quickly, deliberately and collaboratively to ensure that the planning, markets, operations and systems keep pace with the changes. We can achieve great change together.”

RIIA identifies potential future system weak points that would need to be addressed as renewables increase. These results are meant to assist stakeholders as they weigh plans and policies that will further change the future grid’s resource mix. MISO will host a final RIIA workshop on Wednesday, March 3, 2021 from 2 – 4 pm ET to provide an overview of the report and discuss its conclusions.

“We believe it will take transformational change, including redefined markets and planning processes, to enable efficient and reliable operations in the future,” said MISO’s EVP Market & Grid Strategies Richard Doying.  “Coordinated action amongst all stakeholders will be necessary to facilitate participants’ decarbonization goals and plans for higher levels of renewable generation.”