Dive Brief:
- Holiday demand plunged across the Midcontinent ISO's market territory, causing the grid operator twice to issue minimum generation emergency alerts twice around Independence Day.
- Cooler weather, the July 4 holiday and higher wind production may have all contributed, a spokesman for the grid told Platts, forcing prices around the grid lower than $25/MWh.
- MISO issued a similar alert about a year ago, also around the holiday, and has been forced to send out the alerts several times during the last five summers.
Dive Insight:
Twice over the long holiday weekend, MISO officials issued minimum generation alerts signaling a potential surplus of demand across the system in the early morning hours of Saturday and Sunday.
In the first, MISO said the forecasted dispatchable down-room of online resources was 1,973MW, and said the event “may result in utilization of emergency ranges of on-line Generation Resources, the de-commitment of Generation Resources, requests to reduce purchases, or other Emergency actions.”
In the second event, the foretasted dispatchable down-room was 1,600 MW.
A MISO spokesman told Platts that “in general we see surplus conditions requiring [minimum generation] declarations on weekends where load is low and we have a lot of base load generation on-line. High wind can contribute to these conditions.”
MISO data showed demand around 57,000 MW during both events. Prices in Indiana, Illinois and Minnesota all dropped steeply, to below $25/MWh.