Stakeholders are telling the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator (MISO) that if adequate transmission were in place in the heartland, new developments of both coal-fired and wind-powered generation would occur, but for now there is insufficient transmission to keep up with new generating plants coming online in the region, a top official with MISO said last Wednesday.

“In general, if you look at it relative to the needs, limited transmission has been built for decades,” said MISO President James Torgerson. Constraints exist for delivery of both renewable and nonrewable resources in the Midwest, Torgerson said in comments made at a FERC Midwest energy infrastructure conference in Chicago. “Particularly, for new development located in remoter, congested areas,” he noted.

“We’re seeing several congested areas where new requests will not be accommodated without significant new transmission,” Torgerson said. “Currently, our queue has 144 active interconnection requests — and this does not include the Grid American companies — that total 48,000 MW,” Torgerson said.

“Stakeholders have told us that if transmission were in place, we would see developments of new coal and wind that tends to be located more remotely from load centers, and this would increase fuel diversity,” the MISO official told the conference. Indeed, the American Wind Energy Association has plans for wind development in the Midwest that includes projections of as much as 10,000 MW that could be available to markets in the region.

Meanwhile, another panel at the conference examined energy transfer issues between the U.S. and Canada. The roundtable discussion looked at infrastructure constraints and improvements needed in energy supply and transmission between the U.S. and Canada.

Manitoba Hydro’s Ron Mazur said that a lot of the transmission constraints that exist in the system inhibiting additional power exports from Manitoba into the U.S. are constraints that are primarily further south of the Canadian-U.S. border. “Getting beyond the Minneapolis area, from our aspect, is certainly difficult and there’s a lot of competition for the transmission system.”

According to Mazur, there’s about 4,000 MW to 5,000 MW of economically and environmentally developable hydro power that remains available. “However, that development would require major interconnections into the U.S. or into our neighboring provinces and those interconnections coming into the Midwest would at least have to get up to Minneapolis, but perhaps further.”

In order to accomplish and invest “in this type of climate, we think we’d need some long-term power sales agreements, with some certainty in that investment,” Mazur said. In addition, the Manitoba Hydro official said with any additional transmission that might be built, the company “would need to be able to have some indication that we could be able to use it for the generation we’d develop.”

Manitoba Hydro’s interconnection capability south to the U.S. is about 2,100 MW. “East and West, to our neighboring provinces, it’s considerably less in the order of 300 MW.” Mazur said that Manitoba Hydro supplies approximately 10% of Minnesota’s energy needs.

The company has a coordination agreement with MISO that “makes Manitoba Hydro look like a MISO member from a tariff perspective,” the Manitoba Hydro executive went on to note. “We believe that through the coordination agreement between Manitoba Hydro and MISO, seams issues are virtually eliminated,” Mazur said.

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