Docket No. EL25-80-000
I concur with the legal finding herein that the MISO tariff allows the MISO Independent Market Monitor (IMM) to analyze and critique the competition effects of MISO’s transmission proposals on MISO’s markets. That transmission planning affects RTO markets is factually undeniable and thus makes this order an easy legal call. Moreover, the many special interest groups which have lobbied for ever more transmission spending driven by transmission planning regulations have long argued that FERC has the legal authority to impose transmission planning regulations such as Orders No. 1000 and 1920 because transmission planning affects rates, ergo FERC has authority under the Federal Power Act to impose ever more expansive planning requirements on transmission providers, RTO and non-RTO alike. By similar logic, analyzing and critiquing the impact on rates of an RTO’s transmission planning and proposals clearly fall within the core duties of a market monitor.
Beyond the legal issue decided herein, it should be emphasized that the dispute that instigated this order did not arise in a vacuum. The past four years have seen the fastest rise in consumers’ monthly power bills in the past 25 years, and the relentless increase in monthly power bills continues.[1] Millions of Americans are struggling to pay their monthly bills.[2]
Despite the understandable concern and publicity over capacity market auction results in MISO and PJM over the past year,[3] transmission costs are the single biggest driver of skyrocketing monthly power bills[4] and have been for years. Transmission costs are driven not by the price of fuels such as natural gas, coal or oil, which change literally hourly and are set in global markets, but by capital expenses (“capex”), which are a result of intentional planning and intentional policy decisions, in this case by the management of MISO.
MISO has proposed a new tranche of transmission projects, which carries a huge “capex” price of $21.8 billion dollars.[5] And as those of us who have sat on many CPCN cases know, the original sticker price of an asset to be constructed is merely a fraction of the ultimate cost to consumers, because financing costs, such as return on equity (“ROE”), over the life of the project will be added in, and the ultimate price will be several multiples of the sticker price. And to make things worse for the consumers we are supposed to protect, for many years FERC has inflated those financings costs for transmission assets by handing out RTO adders and other “FERC candy.”
So to his credit, MISO’s IMM has stepped up and provided a critique of the assumptions and calculations used by MISO to develop and attempt to justify this latest costly tranche of transmission projects. Since the transmission planning that produced this tranche obviously affects the rates consumers pay, this is exactly what the MISO IMM and any market monitor should do.
It is no coincidence that the IMM’s actions herein are strongly defended by state regulators and consumer advocates.[6] Speaking personally from experience, during my 17 years as a state commissioner in PJM, it was state regulators and consumer advocates who consistently defended the role of the PJM IMM in bringing inconvenient facts to light, as well as a different analysis of those facts, when rent-seeking special interests wanted the IMM muzzled or fired. That does not mean that the IMM’s analysis or conclusions about facts cannot be questioned. They surely can (and I have disagreed with the PJM IMM’s conclusions on many occasions). But as former U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “You are entitled to your own opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.” The role of an IMM requires courage and a willingness to put his job on the line by bringing to light uncomfortable (for some) facts and drawing conclusions about those facts that he is prepared to defend forthrightly. The MISO IMM has done so here and he should be recognized and applauded.
For these reasons, I respectfully concur.
[1] See, e.g., Noah Schwartz, Requests for utility rate hikes reach $29B in 2025 – report, S&P Global Market Intelligence, July 10, 2025 (“The report noted that utilities’ transmission spending increases and extreme weather events have been drivers of the rate spikes.”) (emphasis added); see also Bldg. for the Future Through Elec. Reg’l Transmission Plan. & Cost Allocation & Generator Interconnection, Order No. 1920, 187 FERC ¶ 61,068 (Christie, Comm’r, dissenting at P 15 & nn.49-54) (citations omitted) (Order No. 1920 Dissent), order on reh’g, Order No. 1920‑A, 189 FERC ¶ 61,126 (2024), order on reh’g, Order No. 1920-B, 191 FERC ¶ 61,026 (2025), https://www.ferc.gov/news-events/news/e-1-commissioner-christie-dissent-transmission-planning-and-cost-allocation-rule; Robert Walton, et al., 9 US electric power sector issues to watch in 2025, Utility Dive, Jan. 8, 2025 (“The price U.S. consumers pay for electricity will continue to ascend in 2025, driven by a range of factors including rising demand, transmission and distribution cost increases . . . .”), https://www.utilitydive.com/news/electric-power-sector-issues-to-watch-prices-demand-reliability-renewables-nuclear-vpp-transmission/736492/; U.S. Energy Information Administration, U.S. electricity prices continue steady increase, May 15, 2025, https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65284; Herman K. Trabish, The regulator’s dilemma: balancing grid modernization with rising power bills, Utility Dive, July 15, 2025 (“[C]ustomer electricity prices are up 4.5% nationally, almost twice the 2.4% national inflation rate, according to the June Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index.”), https://www.utilitydive.com/news/utility-regulators-paradox-modernization-electricity-affordability/751526/.
[2] See, e.g., Amanda Durish Cook & Tom Kleckner, Overheard at 10th Annual GCPA MISO-SPP Forum, RTO Insider, Mar. 12, 2024, https://www.rtoinsider.com/73311-overheard-10th-annual-gcpa-miso-spp-forum/.
[3] See, e.g., Amanda Durish Cook, MISO Summer Capacity Prices Shoot to $666.50 in 2025/26 Auction, RTO Insider, Apr. 28, 2025, https://www.rtoinsider.com/104023-miso-summer-capacity-prices-2025-26-auction/; Ethan Howland, MISO summer capacity prices jump to $666.50/MW-day as power supplies shrink, Utility Dive, Apr. 29, 2025 https://www.utilitydive.com/news/miso-capacity-auction/746576/; Devin Leith-Yessian, PJM Capacity Prices Spike 10-fold in 2025/26 Auction, RTO Insider, July 30, 2024, https://www.rtoinsider.com/84356-pjm-capacity-prices-spike-2025-26-auction/; Ethan Howland, PJM capacity prices hit record highs, sending build signal to generators, Utility Dive, July 31, 2024, https://www.utilitydive.com/news/pjm-interconnection-capacity-auction-vistra-constellation/722872/.
[4] See, e.g., Order No. 1920 Dissent at P 15 (citing, inter alia, Zach Bright, Electricity prices rise faster than inflation, EnergyWire, Apr. 12, 2024 (“The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that electricity prices rose 5 percent over the past year. That’s higher than the overall consumer price index (3.5 percent) and any other single commodity, like food . . . and gasoline . . . .”) (emphases added), https://www.eenews.net/articles/electricity-prices-rise-faster-than-inflation/; Electricity Inflation 30% Higher Than CPI Over Last 12 Months” Electricity Transmission Competition Coalition, Apr. 10, 2024 (“Electricity inflation remains the highest consumer goods cost among the items in the Consumer Price Index according to the latest release of data by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. . . . The price of electricity has soared because of the accelerating cost of transmission . . . .” (emphasis added)), https://electricitytransmissioncompetitioncoalition.org/electricity-inflation-30-higher-than-cpi-over-last-12-months/; State of the Market Report 2020, PJM Market Monitor, Vol. I, at 17, Table 8 (showing that in 2020, the PJM Market Monitor reported that the cost of transmission exceeded the cost of capacity for the first time), https://www.monitoringanalytics.com/reports/PJM_State_of_the_Market/2020/2020-som-pjm-vol1.pdf; Jim O’Reilly, Led by AEP and Duke, transmission growth poised to rebound from dip in 2022, S&P Global Market Intelligence, Nov. 15, 2023 (showing bar graph providing that aggregate transmission rate base grew from $61.4 billion in 2012 to $163.1 billion in 2022, demonstrating that, nationally, transmission rate base nearly tripled in a decade), https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/research/led-by-aep-and-duke-transmission-growth-poised-to-rebound-from-dip-in-2022); see also Devin Leith-Yessian, Rising Transmission Costs in PJM Concern Consumer Advocates, Enviros, RTO Insider, Dec. 16, 2024, https://www.rtoinsider.com/94060-rising-transmission-costs-pjm-concern-consumer-advocates-enviros/; Noah Schwartz, Requests for utility rate hikes reach $29B in 2025 – report, S&P Global Market Intelligence, July 10, 2025 (“Utility rate hike requests and approvals have reached approximately $29 billion in the first half of 2025, more than doubling the total from the year-ago period, according to a July 10 report from PowerLines. . . . The report noted that utilities’ transmission spending increases and extreme weather events have been drivers of the rate spikes.”), https://www.capitaliq.spglobal.com/web/client?auth=inherit#news/articleabstract?id=91494944; compare State of the Market Report 2023, PJM Market Monitor, Vol. II, Section 1, at 18, Table 1-9, https://www.monitoringanalytics.com/reports/PJM_State_of_the_Market/2023.shtml, with State of the Market Report 2014, PJM Market Monitor, Vol. II, Section 1, at 16, Table 1-9, https://www.monitoringanalytics.com/reports/PJM_State_of_the_Market/2014/2014-som-pjm-volume2-sec1.pdf, with State of the Market Report 2013, PJM Market Monitor, Vol. II, Section 1, at 12, Table 1-9, https://www.monitoringanalytics.com/reports/PJM_State_of_the_Market/2013/2013-som-pjm-volume2-sec1.pdf, and State of the Market Report 2019, PJM Market Monitor, Vol. II, Section 1, at 18, Table 1-10, https://www.monitoringanalytics.com/reports/PJM_State_of_the_Market/2019/2019-som-pjm-sec1.pdf (demonstrating that for PJM, the largest RTO by load in the country, the transmission component of wholesale power costs has essentially tripled over the past decade, from just $5.65/MWh in 2013 to $16.54/MWh in 2023 and that transmission now constitutes almost a third of wholesale power costs, up from approximately 10% just a decade earlier).
[5] See, e.g., LSP Transmission Holdings II, LLC, 191 FERC ¶ 61,222, at P 4 (2025) (“On December 12, 2024, the MISO Board of Directors (Board) approved the first phase of the second LRTP Tranche, termed ‘Tranche 2.1,’ which includes 24 Multi-Value Projects across 323 facilities located entirely within MISO’s Midwest Subregion, with an estimated cost of $21.8 billion.” (footnote omitted)); Michelle Wilson, Transforming the Grid: MISO’s $21.8 Billion LRTP Tranche 2.1 Portfolio, MISO, Sept. 25, 2024, https://www.misoenergy.org/meet-miso/media-center/miso-matters/transforming-the-grid-misos-$21.8-billion-tranche-2.1-transmission-portfolio.
[6] E.g., Colorado Consumer Advocate Comments at 6-8; Illinois AG Protest at 2-4; Joint Consumer Advocates Comments at 2-6; Mississippi Commission Comments at 1-4; OMS Comments at 3-4.