As if to welcome the nation’s utility regulators to Minneapolis for the National Association of Regulatory Commissioners (NARUC) summer meeting next week, MISO declared an Energy Emergency Alert Level 2 on Wednesday, July 15th, citing forced generation outages, above-normal temperatures, and higher-than-forecasted load.
Interestingly, MISO did not mention that its wind resources, which constitute 33,687 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity and 15.6 percent of the region’s total nameplate capacity, produced almost nothing (a mere 5 percent of their potential output) when demand was highest.
Today, we dive into wind’s disappearing act and other interesting findings from MISO’s exciting Wednesday afternoon.
What’s an EEA, Anyway?
Before we get into the major points, it helps to know that Energy Emergency Alerts, or EEAs, are declared when MISO expects or experiences operating reserves to be lower than necessary to maintain normal operations.
MISO has recently streamlined its emergency classifications, and the graphic below illustrates the steps taken at each EEA level, from curtailing exports to committing emergency demand response and making emergency energy purchases, ultimately culminating in load shedding in the event of an EEA3.
These emergency tiers also affect electricity prices, but that is a complex topic we will address at a later date.
1. Natural Gas, Coal, and Nuclear Carry The Day
Few of our readers will be surprised that the data show nuclear, coal, and natural gas punched above their weight during the heat wave, while wind and solar punched below it.
The primary y-axis in the graph below shows the installed capacity of each resource as a percentage of the total installed capacity in MISO, per the May 2026 EIA Form 860m release. The secondary y-axis shows the percentage of MISO’s energy that the resources accounted for from July 9th through July 15th, using MISO generation data.
We determined that nuclear accounts for just 5.8 percent of the total installed capacity in MISO but provided 12.3 percent of the energy consumed during this time. Coal and natural gas account for 21.6 percent and 39.3 percent of installed capacity, respectively, and produced 27.6 percent and 44.1 percent of the region’s energy needs.
On the other hand, while wind accounts for 15.9 percent of installed capacity, it produced just 4.9 percent of the energy consumed during the heatwave. Solar fared better, producing 8.3 percent of the energy while constituting 10.9 percent of capacity.
Not only did wind perform very poorly during the heatwave from an energy standpoint, but it also performed poorly during the maximum generation (MaxGen) emergency periods relative to its accredited capacity.
2. Dwindling Wind Resources
According to the MISO Planning Year 2026-2027 Loss of Load Expectation Study Final Report, wind had an estimated summer effective load-carrying capacity of 18.2 percent.
Our previous analyses on this topic suggests this accreditation is too high. A 2023 report we conducted for the North Dakota Transmission Authority suggested a peak accreditation of 7.1 percent and a net-peak accreditation of 5.8 percent to account for periods of low wind generation.
Using EIA Form 860M and MISO generation data, we plotted hourly wind capacity factors against accredited capacity. As you can see, it was far below its capacity value for nearly the entire day. At one point, it bottomed out at 3 percent capacity factor, meaning 97 percent of the wind turbine’s potential output was not being generated.
During the EEA2, wind generation maxed out at 6 percent (a substantial improvement from 3 percent), but it was still operating at just one-third of its summer capacity accreditation.
3. Campbell Plant, Coming in Clutch, Probably
This is your quarterly reminder that EPA data show that forest fires emit more small particulates than the entire power sector. The photo below, provided by our friend Rep. Dave Prestin, shows the reliable, affordable J.H. Campbell plant, owned by Consumers Energy in Michigan.
As we have recently detailed, even though the plant is one of the lowest-cost coal plants in America, the plant was slated for closure on May 31st, 2025, due to Consumers’ “sweeping proposal” to eliminate coal as a fuel for electricity by 2025.
We doubt Consumers would ever admit it, but we would wager the company was probably relieved that the Trump administration issued the 202(C) order preventing the company from shutting the plant down, as locational marginal prices (LMPs) at the Michigan Hub exceeded $1,000 per megawatt hour (MWh) during the periods of peak grid stress.
Just for fun, we determined that if the Campbell plant were operating at its full Summer Net Capacity of 1,330 MW during the heatwave, it would have outproduced the entire MISO wind fleet, which totals 33,676 MW, for three hours on July 15th.
The entire wind fleet’s inability to consistently outproduce one coal plant during periods of peak system stress validates the industry-wide vibe shift toward building more dispatchable power plants to meet rising demand, as evidenced by the fact that 74 percent of approved or near-final generator interconnection-agreements in the Expedited Resource Addition Study are natural gas, while wind and solar each constituted just 9 percent, respectively, and storage constituted 8 percent.
4. Wind Drought, Near-Blackout
It’s worth noting that wind was underperforming even though MISO is the largest RTO in the country in terms of geographical footprint, spanning from Canada to Louisiana. And while almost all of the wind resources are in the north and central regions, the wind fleet still covers an area double the size of PJM.
This challenges the idea that “the wind is always blowing somewhere” and that if we simply build more transmission lines, we can connect these resources to Americans across the country. This would be true if the foundation for the argument was accurate to begin with. But it’s not.
The truth is that widespread wind droughts are very common, and longer transmission lines for wind resources are meaningless when the wind isn’t blowing anywhere—which happened to be the case in MISO during this latest heatwave.
5. The Scorecard
Based on their performances during the heatwave and peak demand, we made a scorecard to show the rankings of each resource in MISO.
Nuclear was the unquestioned leader, running near full capacity throughout the entire heatwave. Natural gas was the #1 resource in MISO throughout, and therefore it deserves one of the highest rankings, followed closely by coal. Hydro, while an insignificant resource in MISO, still performed decently.
Solar performed fairly well during the day, but MISO had to manage the entire solar fleet dropping off the grid during the evening peaks. This provides challenges on any day, but it is especially challenging during periods of high stress. Natural gas served as the primary backup resource that kept the lights on.
Wind was the clear loser, providing very little energy and almost no reliability value whatsoever. If nothing else, it was at least consistent…(ly low).
6. North/South Price Discrepancies
For much of the heatwave, there was a noticeable difference between MISO regions in the North compared to the South. As you can see below, prices in the South were consistently lower.
But the states in MISO South are also not pursuing resource portfolios that are heavily dependent on wind, solar, and storage. Thus, their prices are much more stable than those experienced in MISO North and Central.
For the last decade, we were told we needed to build lots of transmission to export or wheel wind and solar across the country during times of peak system stress. But it turns out that maybe the transmission was to connect the weather-dependent regions to distant coal and gas resources all along.
7. The Import of Imports
Imports played an important role in keeping the lights on Wednesday evening. According to MISO, the region was importing a massive 17,873 MW at 8:30 pm, accounting for about 16 percent of total demand.
For context, 17,812 MW is nearly the size of the projected peak demand margin for MISO Region 1, which has a peak demand of 18,927 MW.
The imports came largely from PJM and Southwest Power Pool, with significant contributions from Ontario and Manitoba, as well.
This brings up several hard realities for grid planners and NARUC attendees moving forward, as they increasingly rely on imports to ensure reliability. Imports will become harder to come by during peak periods as load continues to grow and conditions become tighter nationwide due to reliance on variable generation.
MISO, specifically, needs to be asking—what happens if PJM imports are no longer available during these tight conditions? PJM’s latest auction resulted in nearly 7 GW less capacity than needed to meet its reliability standards, continuing the trend from the auction before it that came up short for the first time in the RTO’s history.
This result is unsurprising, given that dispatchable capacity in the region has been declining for years, load is rising, and the current trend of building intermittent resources to shore up the gaps simply has no way to keep up. A recent report that Mitch co-authored with Jonathan Lesser at the National Center of Energy Analytics noted this trend.
Conclusion
The lights stayed on in MISO this week, but the emergency declaration should give the NARUC attendees plenty to discuss regarding reliability next week, supplementing the almost certain focus on affordability that is the soup-de-jour of the electricity sector.
The years-long practice of taking these factors for granted as policy shifted toward decarbonization is now rearing its ugly head.
A version of this article was originally published by Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling at Energy Bad Boys on Substack.