INVESTIGATION INTO IOWA UTILITIES'WINTER 2026-2027 PREPAREDNESSPLANS
Utility Name
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Utility Contact Name
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Utility Contact Email
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example@example.com
Previous Season
1. Peak Load: What was your forecasted and actual coincident and non-coincident peak load?
2. Planning Reserve Margin: Explain whether you were able to meet the planning reserve margin required by your regional transmission organization/independent system operator (RTO/1SO).
a. Explain whether you had to purchase additional power capacity in order to meet the planning reserve margin.
i. If so, how much additional capacity in megawatts (MW's), what was the cost ($/MW), what was the effect on retail rates, and what are your plans to meet this in future years?
ii. If you didn't meet the planning reserve margin and had to pay a deficiency charge or other penalty to the RTO/1SO, how much was the penalty and what was the effect on retail rates?
b. Did you need to rely on any demand response customers to meet your planning reserve margin?
i. If so, how many total MW of demand response?
ii. How many of these customers, or total MW, also function as load modifying resources (LMRs)?
3. Accredited Capacity: What are the three-year average accredited capacity values for your existing generation assets?
a. Provide the values for each individual generation unit.
b. If the 2025 accredited capacity values were less than the three-year average for your existing generation assets, explain the reason?
i. What plans, if any, do you have to improve the accredited capacity?
ii. Describe the plans for each generation unit.
4. Fuel Availability: If your utility had any supply chain constraints affecting natural gas or coal availability, what were the constraints?
5. Outages: Explain any unscheduled generation or transmission outages, or outages that were moved from the originally scheduled dates or times, if applicable. Include details of the causes (GADS reports), durations, energy or deliverability loss, and retail rate impacts.
6. Congestion Hedging: Did you have adequate Long Term Congestion Rights to mitigate price spikes due to congestion?
a. Did your utility experience higher or lower locational marginal prices(LMPs) compared to the previous season?
b. Explain whether you had to buy energy from the wholesale market at prices higher than your planned generation?
i. What was the impact on retail rates overall during the season?
ii. If you were able to reduce cost by purchases from the whole sale market, what was the impact on retail rates overall during theseason?
7. Energy Hedging: Describe any energy hedging options available to your utility, including whether these options were adequate for your utility's needs.
8. Gas Hedging: In regards to gas supply to generation resources specifically, describe whether you had adequate gas hedging options to mitigate price spikes, including whether you had adequate gas storage.
9. Major Events: How many emergency energy alerts did you experience? Provide details on duration.
a. Did you need to use demand response customers during any energy alert or generally during the peak season?
b. If so, how much and what percentage of your entire demand response MWs did that represent?
10. During the July 15 MISO Energy Emergency Alert (EEA) 2 Event, did your utility receive scheduling instructions from MISO for LMR dispatch?
a. If so, how much capacity was requested and how much was provided?
b. Did you or your customers encounter any issues such as request timing, MW requests, etc.?
11. How did your utility perform during the July 15 MISO EEA 2 event?
a. What were the biggest issues encountered?
b. Did all of your generators perform? If not, how many MWs were you short?
c. What went well?
d. For any issues, what can the Utilities Commission do to support you in the future?
Upcoming Season
1. Peak Load: Is your utility ready to reliably serve peak load for the winter season?
a. Provide a copy of your complete response to the most recent OMS-MlSO Survey, if applicable, and/or your SPP workbook, if applicable.
b. Are there any hazards, threats, or vulnerabilities that you are concerned could affect your utility's ability to reliably serve load on peak usage days?
2. Planning Reserve Margin: Will you be able to meet the planning reserve margin required by your RTO/ISO?
a. Provide unit-level Direct Loss of Load (DLOL) Seasonal AccreditedCapacity (SAC) values for all four seasons in the 2026/2027 planning year for MISO or for the Winter Season for SPP.
b. Will you have to purchase capacity in order to meet the planning reserve margin requirement?
i. If so, how much capacity (MWs), what was the cost ($/MW), what will be the effect on retail rates, and what are your plans to meet this in future years?
ii. If you won't be able to meet the planning reserve margin requirement, will you have to pay a deficiency charge or otherpenalty to the RTO/ISO? Include any effect it will have on retail rates.
c. Will you need to use any demand response customers to meet your planning reserve margin requirement?
i. If so, how many total MW of demand response?
ii. How many of these customers, or total MW, also function asLMRs?
3. Fuel Availability: If your utility foresees any supply chain constraints affecting natural gas or coal availability, what are those constraints?
4. Congestion Hedging: Do you have adequate Long Term CongestionRights/Financial Transmission Rights to mitigate price spikes due to congestion?
5. Energy Hedging: Describe any energy hedging options available to your utility, including whether these options were adequate for your utility's needs.
6. Gas Hedging: In regards to gas supply to generation resources specifically, describe whether you had adequate gas hedging options to mitigate price spikes, including whether you had adequate gas storage.
7. Outages: Explain any planned generation or transmission outages, if applicable. Provide details of the causes (GADS reports), durations, energy or deliverability loss, and expected impacts on retail rates.
8. Major Events: Explain any updates to your utility's plans for initiating and managing a system wide load shed to protect the bulk electric system in the event of an imbalance of electricity supply and demand.
a. What are your procedures for updating state and local emergencycmanagement agencies and neighboring utilities during servicecdisruptions?
b. How do essential facilities like hospitals, water treatment plants, andcpublic safety communications infrastructure become identified andcprioritized during emergencies?
9. MISO has proposed adjustments to accreditation rules regarding an offline resource's lead time - 24-Hour Lead Time in Accreditation (RASC-2026-1) - based on their lessons learned from Winter Storm Fern.
a. How does your utility view MISO's current proposal?
b. If implemented as proposed, what effect would this have on your coperations?
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