Power supply OK for summer

Region’s grid overseer says reserve is ample

The overseer of the power grid for much of the middle of the country forecast Wednesday that the region that includes Wisconsin will have ample power supplies available to meet demand for electricity this summer.

The Midcontinent Independent System Operator, which hosted a summer outlook conference with utilities Wednesday, said it will have a buffer, or reserve margin, of 18% this summer. The grid operator, based in Carmel, Ind., is projecting demand for electricity to reach 127.3 gigawatts this summer, with 23 gigawatts of reserve capacity available.

That would put the region above its “reserve margin” target of 14.3%, according to MISO. The forecast is based on a National Weather Service long-term outlook that calls for a hotter than normal summer with average precipitation.

The grid operator has expressed concern about power supplies in the years ahead, given a wave of coal-fired power plant retirements stemming from low natural gas prices and

federal environmental regulations.

“Starting in the next few years, we are seeing a dramatic shift in the resources available to meet demand during the hottest days of the year,” Todd Ramey, vice president of system operations and market services at MISO, said in a statement.

MISO is responsible for overseeing both a wholesale power market as well as reliability that includes Wisconsin and 14 other states as well as the Canadian province of Manitoba.

The region stretches northsouth from Manitoba to Louisiana and west-east from eastern Montana to Michigan.

Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission published its own assessment last year of utility supplies, and that report showed the state’s utilities had plenty of power to meet customers’ electricity needs for the next several years.

The Wisconsin utilities were expecting to have at least 20% extra supply on hand for 2014, and were forecasting they would have a reserve margin of nearly 19% this summer.