MISO: Building The Perfect Beast

Seams, holes, and historic precedent challenge the Midwest ISO's evolution.

In a single sentence, Bill Smith of the Organization of MISO States (OMS) summarizes prevailing concerns about the new-and-improved Midwest ISO: "When it starts, it has to work."

Smith, who serves as executive director of a group representing state regulators in MISO's sprawling footprint, is referring to MISO's provisional start-up of a new market-based electric transmission grid operation. But as the days count down to the March 1, 2005, launch, many people are thinking about a different date-namely, Aug. 14, 2003, on which a series of events (beginning with a mysterious encroaching tree somewhere in Ohio) led to blackouts from the Midwest to Maine. Before utilities managed to fully restore the grid some 72 hours later, the blackout had cost the American economy as much as $10 billion in lost productivity.

"The Aug. 14 outage was a turning event for MISO," says James P. Torgerson, MISO's president and CEO. "It changed the way we look at reliability."

Since last August, the regional transmission organization (RTO) has strengthened its focus on grid reliability by upgrading its information systems and procedures, and by expanding its staff of operators. It also has taken strides to improve the way it interacts with other RTOs and non-MISO utilities. These steps are intended to address deficiencies that contributed to the blackout, and to demonstrate the RTO's capabilities and readiness to operate the largest wholesale power market in North America.