{"document":{"slug":"protest-er27-25-clean-energy-advocates","title":"Protest of Clean Energy Advocates and Community Organizations","issued":"2026-10-23","accession":"20261023-5163","docket":"ER27-25-000","group":"MISO Large Load Addition Resource Study (LARS)","filer":"Sierra Club, NRDC and other clean energy and community groups","kind":"protest","file":"sources/originals/20261023-5163_Final LARS Protest.pdf","url":"https://elibrary.ferc.gov/eLibrary/filelist?accession_number=20261023-5163","sha256":"78535dffd5b2995f5c9510d6b24abf428f45799e637bc5fad9998615e9f6efee","pages":49,"tokens":14195,"emptyPages":[]},"pages":[{"page":1,"startToken":0,"endToken":223,"text":"1 \nUNITED STATES OF AMERICA \nBEFORE THE \nFEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION \n \nMidcontinent Independent \nSystem Operator, Inc. \n \n) \n) \n) \nDocket No. ER27-25-000 \n \nPROTEST OF CLEAN ENERGY ADVOCATES AND COMMUNITY \nORGANIZATIONS \nPursuant to Rule 211 of the Rules of Practice and Procedure of the Federal Energy \nRegulatory Commission (“FERC” or “Commission”)1, Clean Energy Advocates2  and \nCommunity Organizations3 respectfully submit this protest in response to the October 2, 2026 \nfiling of the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, Inc. (“MISO”) in the above-captioned \ndocket, which proposes revisions to MISO’s Open Access Transmission, Energy and Operating \nReserve Markets Tariff (“Tariff”) to establish a Large Load Addition Resource Study (“LARS”) \nprocess.4 For the reasons explained below, the Commission should reject the LARS proposal. \n \n \n \n1 18 C.F.R. § 385.211. \n2 Clean Energy Advocates are Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Sustainable \nFERC Project, Clean Grid Alliance, Clean Wisconsin, and Fresh Energy. \n3 Community Organizations are Community Collaboration on Climate Change and Michigan \nEnvironmental Justice Coalition. \n4 Midcontinent Indep. Sys. Operator, Inc., Large Load Addition Resource Study Process, Docket \nNo. ER27-25-000 (Oct. 2, 2026), Accession No. 20261002-5074 (“LARS Filing”). Citations to \nthe “Transmittal Letter” are to the transmittal letter accompanying the LARS Filing. Citations to \nthe “Drake Testimony” are to the Prepared Direct Testimony of Christina Drake, Director, \nGeneration Interconnection, MISO, submitted as Tab C to the LARS Filing."},{"page":2,"startToken":223,"endToken":438,"text":"2 \nTABLE OF CONTENTS \nI. \nIntroduction ............................................................................................................................ 3 \nII. \nBackground ............................................................................................................................ 3 \nA. \nLarge Load Growth and Interconnection .......................................................................... 3 \nB. \nThe Show Cause Order ...................................................................................................... 4 \n1. Study procedures for large loads ........................................................................................ 5 \n2. Cost shifting ........................................................................................................................ 6 \n3. Generation serving electrically proximate load .................................................................. 6 \nC. \nThe LARS Proposal ........................................................................................................... 7 \nD. \nThe Stakeholder Process ................................................................................................. 12 \nIII. Arguments ............................................................................................................................ 13 \nA. \nLARS creates a cost shift from large loads and their generation to other customers ...... 13 \n1. LARS assigns upgrade costs to the pricing zone .............................................................. 14 \n2. LARS shifts costs to interconnection customers in the DPP ............................................ 18 \n3. Generation-load pair failures shift costs to other ratepayers ............................................ 21 \nB. \nLARS violates open access principles and enables undue discrimination ...................... 22 \n1. MISO’s LARS proposal is unduly discriminatory ........................................................... 23 \nC. \nLARS is an unjustified departure from the Commission’s pro forma interconnection \nprocedures and does not accomplish the purposes of Order No. 2023 ........................... 33 \nD. \nMISO’s LARS proposal is not responsive to Commission direction regarding \n“electrically proximate” generation and load from the Show Cause Order .................... 37 \nE. \nLARS threatens reliability and efficient planning ........................................................... 39 \n1. Parallel independent studies produce unreliable results and reliability risks ................... 40 \n2. Siloed, expedited processes are already driving MISO’s largest transmission investments \noutside regional planning .................................................................................................. 41 \n3. Integrated planning processes are available and MISO should adopt them ..................... 43 \nIV. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 45"},{"page":3,"startToken":438,"endToken":689,"text":"3 \nI. \nIntroduction \nAs the Commission has recognized, integrated planning processes can help ensure that \ngeneration and transmission can be arranged to supply nearby large customers reliably, at lower \ncost, and with faster engineering study processes, ultimately resulting in more just and \nreasonable rates without harming other existing or future customers or suppliers. Better load and \ngeneration interconnection processes are clearly needed. MISO’s LARS proposal does not \nachieve that end, nor does it improve other interconnection processes. Instead of improving the \ncoordination of generation and transmission planning, MISO’s LARS proposal is a new, \npermanent parallel interconnection study process that will shift costs from large loads to other \nexisting and future transmission customers and resource owners, create and worsen reliability \nconcerns, and allow for unchecked and harmful anti-competitive discrimination. The \nCommission should reject LARS because it is not just and reasonable and is unduly \ndiscriminatory or, in the alternative, issue a deficiency letter requiring MISO to demonstrate how \nLARS can be made just and reasonable.  \nII. \nBackground \nA. Large Load Growth and Interconnection \nMISO estimates that annual load growth will be 1 to 3 percent per year from 2025 \nthrough 2044.5 MISO integrates new generation and load through separate processes on different \nschedules.6 New generation enters either through MISO’s cluster-based Definitive Planning \nPhase (“DPP”) or its temporary, serialized Expedited Resource Addition Study (“ERAS”). The \nDPP operates on a 365-day timeline and ERAS operates quarterly. New load is accounted for \n \n5 Transmittal Letter at 2-4. \n6 Drake Testimony at 3–4."},{"page":4,"startToken":689,"endToken":978,"text":"4 \nthrough the MISO Transmission Expansion Plan (“MTEP”) or the Expedited Project Review \n(“EPR”). Where MTEP operates on an 18-month cycle, EPR provides approval in roughly 90 \ndays. MISO acknowledges that “large loads have overtaken the EPR process.”7 The 89 EPR \nrequests approved in MTEP26 accounted for roughly 54 percent of the approximately $14.7 \nbillion of transmission investment approved in that cycle.8 \nA generator may be treated as an alternative to a transmission solution only once that \ngenerator has a signed interconnection agreement (“GIA”).9 This poses a timing problem. A \nlarge load whose transmission solution depends on a new generator cannot obtain MTEP \napproval until the generator has completed the DPP or ERAS interconnection queues. MISO \ndescribes this “timing problem” as the problem the LARS parallel study process is designed to \nsolve.10 \nB. The Show Cause Order \nOn June 18, 2026, the Commission instituted a proceeding under section 206 of the \nFederal Power Act (“the Act” or “FPA”), preliminarily finding that MISO’s Tariff “appears to be \nunjust and unreasonable because it lacks provisions that address, with sufficient clarity and \nconsistency, how MISO and/or the Transmission Owners will timely study . . . the provision of \ntransmission service to Eligible Customers on behalf of large loads.”11 The Commission directed \nMISO to show cause why the Tariff remains just and reasonable without provisions addressing \n \n7 Id. at 26. \n8 MISO, MTEP26 Report Review, Planning Advisory Committee, at 4, 8 (Oct. 7, 2026), \navailable at \nhttps://cdn.misoenergy.org/20261007%20PAC%20Item%2006%20MTEP26%20Report%20Rev\niew785938.pdf. \n9 Drake Testimony at 12. \n10 Id. at 3–4, 12. \n11 Midcontinent Indep. Sys. Operator, Inc., 195 FERC ¶ 61,212, at P 39 (June 24, 2026) (“Show \nCause Order”)."},{"page":5,"startToken":978,"endToken":1190,"text":"5 \n(a) application, study, and ongoing operational requirements for Eligible Customers serving large \nloads; (b) transparency concerning large-load-driven Network Upgrade costs and a pro forma \ncost recovery agreement “to mitigate the risk of cost shifting among transmission customers”; (c) \nco-location arrangements; (d) transmission services for co-located, behind-the-meter, and \nflexible large loads; and (e) “the rates, terms, and conditions of service applicable to \ninterconnection customers serving electrically proximate large load or co-located load.”12 Three \nparts of the Show Cause Order bear directly on LARS: study procedures, cost shifting, and \nproximate loads. \n1. Study procedures for large loads \nThe Commission found that the Tariff lacks “sufficiently clear and consistent provisions \nregarding the study process” for large loads, pointing to the “ad hoc study process” reflected in \nTransmission Owner study agreements “not reflected in MISO’s Tariff,” and identified the \nelements such provisions should contain. These include: \n(1) A definition of large load. \n(2) A rolling application process with non-refundable fees, escalating readiness \nrequirements, and disclosure of duplicative requests. \n(3) Study procedures that account for large-load behavior and flexibility. \n(4) Evaluations of alternative transmission technologies “in all instances,” with a \nwritten demonstration whenever traditional Network Upgrades are selected \ninstead. \n(5) A 60-to-90-day study deadline. \n(6) Ongoing operational requirements. \n \n12 Show Cause Order at P 33."},{"page":6,"startToken":1190,"endToken":1453,"text":"6 \n(7) Pro forma transmission service agreement provisions.13 \n2. Cost shifting \nThe Commission found that the Tariff “appears to be unjust and unreasonable because it \nlacks adequate mechanisms to mitigate the risk of cost shifting among transmission customers,” \nand identified two remedies. First, public posting of the Network Upgrades needed to serve large \nloads and their costs.14 Second, a pro forma cost recovery agreement requiring the Eligible \nCustomer to make “a minimum contribution toward the transmission owner’s transmission \nrevenue requirement,” sized to the megawatts of service requested and secured by credit support, \nso that large-load-driven costs are not “paid by other transmission customers that neither caused \nthe need for nor benefit commensurately from those Network Upgrades.”15 \n3. Generation serving electrically proximate load \nThe Commission defined an “electrically proximate large load” as one “sufficiently \nelectrically close to the interconnection customer’s requested point of interconnection” that the \ncombined impact of generator and load “will be effectively the same as if they were located at \nthe same substation (e.g., large load that is located no more than two substations away from the \ngenerating facility),” and invited revisions “appropriately tailored to MISO’s transmission \nsystem.”16 It found that MISO’s Tariff is deficient because it lacks a study process or \ninterconnection service that reflects “an interconnection customer’s commitment in an \ninterconnection agreement to limit the generating facility’s output” while serving such a load.17 \n \n13 Id. at PP 39, 48–50, 57–65. \n14 Id. at PP 71–77. \n15 Id. at P 82. \n16 Id. at P 112. \n17 Id. at P 113."},{"page":7,"startToken":1453,"endToken":1734,"text":"7 \nReferencing SPP’s High Impact Large Load Generation Assessment (“HILLGA”) \nprocess, the Commission stated that such a generator’s interconnection service “should be of an \ninterim nature until the interconnection customer obtains” Energy Resource Interconnection \nService (“ERIS”) or Network Resource Interconnection Service (“NRIS”), and noted that \nMISO’s system “may warrant consideration of a more limited definition of electrically \nproximate.”18 The Commission directed that any responsive filing to the Show Cause Order \naddress whether such generators would participate in MISO’s energy, ancillary services, and \ncapacity markets, with what restrictions, and how they would be accredited.19 \nThe Commission “strongly encourage[d]” MISO to address these directives through \nfilings under section 205, but specified that any such filing “should also explain which of the \nCommission’s above directives their filing addresses and how it resolves them.”20 \nC. The LARS Proposal \nOn October 2, 2026, MISO filed proposed revisions to Attachment X (the Generator \nInterconnection Procedures, or “GIP”), Appendices 1 and 6 to Attachment X, and Attachment FF \nto establish the Large Load Addition Resource Study, with a requested effective date of \nDecember 2, 2026 and a first study period in the first quarter of 2027.21 MISO described LARS \nas “expedited review of the addition of 200 MW or greater loads together with new generation \nresources that are electrically proximate to those loads,” conducted in a parallel study process \nlasting up to 120 days that builds on EPR and ERAS.22 Unlike ERAS, however, LARS “will be a \npermanent MISO study process.”23 \n \n18 Id. at P 115. \n19 Id. at P 127. \n20 Id. at P 36. \n21 Transmittal Letter at 2, 53. \n22 Id. at 1–2. \n23 Id. at 11."},{"page":8,"startToken":1734,"endToken":2057,"text":"8 \nLARS creates at least two major changes to how generation interconnection and \ntransmission planning function in MISO. First, LARS creates an exception to the EPR \nrequirement described above in which a generator can be considered an alternative transmission \nsolution only after it has a GIA. Under MISO’s proposed process, a generator that has submitted \na valid LARS application and holds a five-year or longer contract (e.g., Power Purchase \nAgreement or similar off-take agreement) with the large load “may be considered as an \nalternative transmission solution” in the load study even though it does not have a GIA.24 \nSecond, the proposed process creates a new, 120-day serial generator interconnection track \noutside of the DPP and ERAS, through which the paired generator receives NRIS under a new \nform of agreement called the Large Load Generator Interconnection Agreement (“LLGIA”).25 \nMISO presents LARS as responsive to the Show Cause Order’s electrically proximate directive \nand resource adequacy concerns, and as independent of “[t]he cost shifting issues raised in the \nCommission’s Show Cause Order,” which “will be addressed in future filings.”26 \nFour entities drive the LARS process. Only the entity that procures transmission service \nfor a large load may initiate and submit a LARS Application.27 This entity is called a “LARS \nAssociated Transmission Customer,” which MISO states is often a Load Serving Entity \n(“LSE”).28 MISO’s proposal does not set any criteria, timelines, or disclosure obligations on a \nLARS Associated Transmission Customer’s decision whether to sponsor a particular generator \nand load. A generator-load pair, however, has no path into LARS without such sponsorship.29 \n \n24 Id. at 48. \n25 Transmittal Letter at 11; Drake Testimony at 12–13. \n26 Drake Testimony at 39–41. \n27 Transmittal Letter at 6. \n28 Id. \n29 Id. at 6–8. MISO retained this structure over stakeholder objections, citing “mixed feedback.” \nMISO Large Load Working Group, MISO Response to Feedback, at 7 (Sept. 28, 2026), \navailable at"},{"page":9,"startToken":2057,"endToken":2372,"text":"9 \nSecond, the Interconnection Customer develops a generating facility, demonstrates that it will \nprovide energy to the LARS Associated Load, and signs the LLGIA.30 Third, the Transmission \nOwner coordinates with the Interconnection Customer to identify a “definitive Point of \nInterconnection,” supplies the initial transmission solutions that are evaluated in the load study, \nand constructs the necessary Network Upgrades.31 Finally, the “LARS Associated Load” is \ndefined as a single load of at least 200 MW at one Point of Withdrawal.32 \n \nA LARS Application must include an executed agreement with a term of at least five \nyears, “evidencing that the output of the Generating Facility . . . shall be used to provide energy \nto the LARS Associated Load.”33 The Interconnection Customer must request NRIS of at least \n200 MW and no more than 150 percent of the LARS Associated Load’s expected peak demand, \ndemonstrate 100 percent site control, and pay an application fee of $250,000 and an entry \nmilestone of $30,000 per MW.34 Aside from the 150 percent cap, nothing requires the paired \ngeneration to be sized to any particular share of the load’s demand. Nor do the eligibility criteria \nrequire any demonstration of a reliability or resource adequacy need. The Point of \nInterconnection must be in the same Local Resource Zone (“LRZ”) as the load’s Point of \nWithdrawal.35 A LARS Associated Load may be served by more than one Interconnection \nCustomer, though MISO will accept only ten LARS Applications total per study period.36 The \ngenerator’s commercial operation date and the load’s full in-service date must fall within three \n \nhttps://cdn.misoenergy.org/LLWG%20Large%20Load%20Addition%20Resource%20Study%20\nResponse%20(LLWG-2026-6)%20(20260827)784877.pdf. \n30 Transmittal Letter at 6. \n31 Id. at 6–8. \n32 Id. at 7. \n33 Id. at 27. \n34 Id. at 7, 10, 25. \n35 Id. at 10. \n36 Id. at 9, 11."},{"page":10,"startToken":2372,"endToken":2664,"text":"10 \nyears of the application, subject to a further three-year extension under the LLGIA.37 MISO \nacknowledges that it “does not have a requirement that loads bring generation,” and characterizes \nLARS as “an incentive for Load to bring Generation.”38 \nMISO will accept applications on a rolling, “serial ‘first-come, first-served’” basis and \nstudy up to ten generation/load pairs in each of the three study periods per year.39 On the \ngeneration side, each generator is studied “individually in a serial fashion” in its own model.40 \nThe LARS base model includes existing generators, generators with executed GIAs, and \napproved MTEP and EPR projects, but excludes DPP projects without an executed GIA.41 On \nthe load side, the study is “built upon MISO’s existing EPR process.”42 All ten load-generation \npairs are represented together in a single MTEP-based model, the Transmission Owners’ initial \nsolutions are evaluated, and MISO establishes a planning-level solution.43 Although the load-\ngeneration pair must be located in the same LRZ, “MISO will look at the full impacts of the \ngeneration/load pair on MISO’s Transmission System using the same study criteria and \nprocesses applicable to NRIS evaluations of other Interconnection Requests.”44 If there is an \noverallocation because transmission capacity is ultimately found to have been allocated to both a \nLARS generator and a DPP generator, the resulting constraint “will be formalized in a future \nMTEP project,”45 “neither will be required to pay additional costs,”46 and the MTEP project’s \n \n37 Drake Testimony at 10. \n38 Transmittal Letter at 10. \n39 Drake Testimony at 13, 22. \n40 Transmittal Letter at 32. \n41 Id. at 12. \n42 Id. at 13–14. \n43 Id. at 13–14. \n44 Id. at 13. \n45 Id. \n46 Drake Testimony at 33."},{"page":11,"startToken":2664,"endToken":2959,"text":"11 \ncost “will be allocated based on existing Tariff rules, which is likely to be the load within the \ntransmission pricing zone where the transmission upgrade is required.”47  \nWith respect to cost allocation, MISO allocates mitigations to the Baseline Reliability \nProject (“BRP”) or “Other” project types except for mitigation violations observed in the \ngeneration study, which are assigned to the Interconnection Customer as Generator \nInterconnection Project (“GIP”) upgrades.48 BRP and Other upgrades are constructed by the \nTransmission Owner and the costs are recovered through transmission rates under the existing \nprovisions of Attachment FF rather than funded by the Interconnection Customer. According to \nMISO, these costs will most likely be allocated to “the load within the transmission pricing zone \nwhere the transmission upgrade is required.”49 \nLARS generators receive full NRIS, allowing them to “qualify as a Network Resource for \ncapacity and resource adequacy needs” and to “participate in the Planning Reserve Auction.”50 \nThe LLGIA does not require output to be tied to the load except insofar as the generator cannot \ninject until some portion of the load is in service.51 Once the load is fully in service, the LLGIA \ndoes not limit the generator’s output in any way.52 While the generator’s output is not limited by \nits paired load, the generator and load must remain contractually paired for at least fifteen years \nafter the load begins taking service.53 MISO justifies the fifteen-year term as “a standard duration \nfor large load contracts” and as sufficient “to deter entities from invoking the needs of a specific \n \n47 Transmittal Letter at 13. \n48 Id. at 31–32. \n49 Id. at 13. \n50 Drake Testimony at 12–13. \n51 Id. at 26–30. \n52 Id. at 18. \n53 Transmittal Letter at 15–17."},{"page":12,"startToken":2959,"endToken":3222,"text":"12 \nlarge load as a pretext to bypass the DPP queue and receive unrestricted Interconnection Service \non an accelerated timeline.”54 \nD. The Stakeholder Process \nMISO developed LARS in eleven weeks. It first presented the concept to its Large Load \nWorking Group (“LLWG”) on July 16, 2026.55 After presenting revisions at different meetings, \nMISO presented final language on September 23 and filed on October 2.56 \nStakeholders raised, and MISO declined to address, several of the concerns presented in \nthis protest. The Environmental Sector objected to the Transmission Customer’s gatekeeping \nrole, to the LRZ-wide scope of the pairing requirement, and to LARS’s failure to meet the Show \nCause Order’s electrically proximate standard, and asked that generators and loads be jointly \nliable for upgrade costs if a pairing ends early. Energy Futures Group presented the Generator \nand Load Interconnection Process (“GALIP”), which would study large loads and their \ngeneration together within the DPP, with full cost-causation-based allocation of upgrade costs \nand both firm and non-firm service options for load.57 MISO declined to pursue GALIP, stating \nthat it “does not believe in a ‘one size fits all’ approach to interconnection” and that GALIP \n“aimed to shoehorn a parallel generation/load study process into the existing DPP process.”58 \n \n54 Id. at 17. \n55 Drake Testimony at 41. \n56 Id. at 41–43. \n57 Energy Futures Group, Generator and Load Interconnection Process (GALIP) (Aug. 27, 2026), \navailable at \nhttps://cdn.misoenergy.org/20260827%20LLWG%20Item%2013%20Generator%20Load%20Int\nerconnection%20Process%20(GALIP)%20Proposal_Energy%20Futures%20Group777224.pdf. \n58 Drake Testimony at 43–44."},{"page":13,"startToken":3222,"endToken":3556,"text":"13 \nIII. \nArguments \nA. LARS creates a cost shift from large loads and their generation to other \ncustomers \nIt is a long-standing principle of Commission ratemaking that “all approved rates reflect \nto some degree the costs actually caused by the customer who must pay them,” and that \ncompliance is measured “by comparing the costs assessed against a party to the burdens imposed \nor benefits drawn by that party.”59 In the Show Cause Order, the Commission preliminarily \nfound that MISO’s Tariff violates that principle because it “lacks adequate mechanisms to \nmitigate the risk of cost shifting among transmission customers” when large loads drive network \nupgrades.60 LARS does not supply those mechanisms. By MISO’s own account, LARS adopts \nno cost allocation methodology, and “[t]he cost shifting issues raised in the Commission’s Show \nCause Order will be addressed in future filings.”61  \nInstead, LARS builds cost shifting into the process in four ways. First, it assigns the \nnetwork upgrades that a generator-load pair requires to the transmission pricing zone rather than \nto the pair. Second, it studies LARS generators in models that exclude the DPP queue, and \nresolves the resulting double-allocation of transmission capacity through MTEP projects paid for \nby zonal load and through curtailment of DPP generators that paid for their own upgrades. Third, \nit allows either half of a pair to leave the system after fifteen years and the generator to fail at any \ntime, leaving zonal load to pay for whatever transmission must then be built. Fourth, it defers the \ncost recovery agreement, financial security, and transparency measures the Commission \nidentified as necessary. The Commission should reject LARS or, at a minimum, decline to make \n \n59 Midwest ISO Transmission Owners v. FERC, 373 F.3d 1361, 1368 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (quoting \nKN Energy, Inc. v. FERC, 968 F.2d 1295, 1300 (D.C. Cir. 1992)); Ill. Commerce Comm’n v. \nFERC, 576 F.3d 470, 476 (7th Cir. 2009). \n60 Show Cause Order at P 66. \n61 Drake Testimony at 41."},{"page":14,"startToken":3556,"endToken":3881,"text":"14 \nit effective until the cost provisions MISO has promised are filed, accepted if consistent with the \nOrder to Show Cause principles, and incorporated into the LARS Tariff provisions. \n1. LARS assigns upgrade costs to the pricing zone \nAs explained above, LARS sorts network upgrades identified in its load and generation \nstudies into three categories: violations in only the load study, violations in only the generation \nstudy, and violations in both studies. Violations that occur only in the load study or in both the \nload and generation studies are assigned the BRP or Other project types and their costs are \nallocated to all loads in the Transmission Owner’s pricing zone. Only when a violation occurs in \nthe generation study alone will MISO assign the costs of the mitigations to the Interconnection \nCustomer as a GIP upgrade.62 MISO calls this a “cost allocation hierarchy—transitioning from \nGIP to BRP when appropriate.”63 This hierarchy represents impermissible cost shifts.  \nWhen the costs of mitigation are assigned to BRP or Other project types, those costs are \nallocated to the Transmission Owner in whose pricing zone the project is located. Those costs are \nthen recovered through the Transmission Owner’s rates, paid for by every transmission customer \nin the zone. MISO explains that the costs will fall on “the load within the transmission pricing \nzone where the transmission upgrade is required.”64 In contrast, when the same generator \ninterconnects through the DPP, the Interconnection Customer funds the Network Upgrades its \ninterconnection requires. LARS, therefore, takes a category of costs usually assigned to \ngenerators and assigns them to existing load. It is not as though the beneficiaries are unknown or \ndiffuse. Rather, the beneficiaries are simply the generator and the large load, for which the \ngenerator is the “alternative transmission solution.”65 MISO has failed to show how the LBA or \n \n62 Drake Testimony at 27–28. \n63 Transmittal Letter at 14. \n64 Id. at 13. \n65 Id. at 47-48."},{"page":15,"startToken":3881,"endToken":4233,"text":"15 \nLRZ suddenly benefit from the needed upgrades simply because violations show up in the load \nand the generation studies. And in none of these situations is the cost assigned directly to the \nlarge load that is driving the need for the upgrades. This kind of cost shifting is exactly the sort \nof thing the Commission found unjust and unreasonable in the Show Cause Order. \nLARS is likely to shift the cumulative upgrades needed to support the transmission \nsystem, because of the serialized LARS study process. Each LARS generator is studied \n“individually in a serial fashion” in its own model.66 Unlike a DPP cluster study, which identifies \nthe upgrades a group of generators needs together and allocates their costs among the cluster, the \nLARS generation study never captures the combined effect of the ten generators and loads in a \nstudy period, let alone of the thirty pairs that may enter LARS each year. In fact, constraints that \nemerge from the cumulative injection of LARS generators or cumulative impacts of LARS large \nloads are most likely to appear in a load study where all ten pairs are studied together. In that \ncase, however, as explained above, those mitigations will be classified as BRP or Other. \nOtherwise, the problems will reveal themselves in a later MTEP study. Either way, costs will be \nallocated not to the load-generation pair, but to all load in the zone. \nThe pricing zone that pays for upgrades caused by LARS projects may not even be the \nLBA in which the LARS Associated Load takes service. While load-generation pairs must be in \nthe same LRZ, MISO studies “the full impacts of the generation/load pair on MISO’s \nTransmission system” without confining the study to that zone.67 A single LRZ can span \nmultiple LBAs, Transmission Owner pricing zones, and states. Because MISO declined to limit \nthe generation/load pairs to a single LBA or to a set number of substations, the result is that \ncustomers of one Transmission Owner, in one state, can be assigned the cost of upgrades \n \n66 Id. at 12, 31. \n67 Id. at 10–13."},{"page":16,"startToken":4233,"endToken":4574,"text":"16 \nrequired because a data center in another state chose to contract with a generator sited near them. \nThe state regulator responsible for protecting those customers has no jurisdiction over the load \nthat caused the cost, and the retail large load tariffs states are adopting to protect their ratepayers \ncannot reach a load in another state.68 This is textbook cost shifting, which the Commission has \nrecently noted as a concern in the large load context.69 \nTransmission upgrade costs associated with LARS generation should not be assigned to \nload generally, because both the driver and the beneficiaries of the upgrade are a specific \ngenerator-load pair.70 The NRIS service for a LARS Interconnection Customer hinges on the \nconsumption of the LARS associated load. MISO acknowledges this tight connection by \nterminating the LLGIA, and sending the generator back to the DPP for new interconnection \nservice if the load leaves or shrinks within fifteen years.71 A generator whose interconnection \nservice is contingent on one load’s consumption is not a system resource whose upgrades benefit \nthe zone. \nMISO insists that the LARS Associated Transmission Customer “remains responsible for \nthe identified BRPs and Other assigned projects even if such LARS Associated Load does not \ncommence service.”72 Yet the Tariff contains no mechanism through which a Transmission \nCustomer pays for the BRP or an Other project. A Transmission Customer’s only \n \n68 Cf. Show Cause Order at P 83 n.189 (cost recovery directive is “in no way intended to preempt \nor interfere with the ability of states to implement ratepayer protection measures designed to \nmitigate cost shifting among retail customers, such as through state-jurisdictional large load \ntariffs.”). Those measures presuppose that the ratepayers who bear the cost and the load that \ncaused it are subject to the same regulator. \n69 See Show Cause Order at PP 66, 81–82. \n70 See Drake Testimony at 17 (describing the “contractual association, study association, and \noperational association” between the LARS Associated Generation and LARS Interconnection \nCustomer). \n71 Transmittal Letter at 16. \n72 Id. at 35–36."},{"page":17,"startToken":4574,"endToken":4898,"text":"17 \n“responsibility” for those costs is the one it already has to pay the Transmission Owner’s zonal \nrate in the same proportion as every other network customer in the zone. A Transmission \nCustomer that “remains responsible” for a $200 million BRP after its load fails to materialize \nremains responsible for nothing more than its ordinary transmission bill. That is precisely the gap \nthe Commission identified when it found that, “[a]bsent such cost recovery agreements, . . . there \nis no mechanism to help ensure that Eligible Customers taking transmission service on behalf of \nlarge loads (as opposed to other transmission customers) bear the risk of, and are ultimately \nresponsible for, the costs incurred to provide them with the requested transmission service, \nincluding the costs of any needed Network Upgrades.”73 Rather than responding to the \nCommission’s call to fill this gap in cost recovery agreements, MISO merely states that the “cost \nshift is consistent with MISO’s existing processes.”74 Yet it is these existing processes that the \nCommission preliminarily found unjust and unreasonable because they lack “adequate \nmechanisms to mitigate the risk of cost shifting among transmission customers.”75 \nMISO states that “a pro forma cost shifting agreement will need to be executed and new \nterms in transmission services agreements will need to be met,” that it will file those terms by \nNovember 16, and that “LARS can be implemented based on the Tariff revisions filed herein and \nneed not await these future filings.”76 But nothing in the proposed Tariff requires a LARS \nAssociated Transmission Customer to execute any such agreement, post any security for the BRP \nand Other upgrades assigned to the zone, or take any defined transmission service. The only \nparty that posts security in LARS is the generator, and only for the GIP upgrades that LARS \n \n73 Show Cause Order at P 81. \n74 Transmittal Letter at 13. \n75 Show Cause Order at P 66. \n76 Transmittal Letter at 14 & n.66."},{"page":18,"startToken":4898,"endToken":5230,"text":"18 \ndefines as the residual.77 The Commission’s statutory deadline to act on LARS will arrive before \ncomments on the November 16 filings are due. A process that assigns upgrade costs to zonal \nload now, on the strength of an agreement whose terms are not before the Commission, has not \nbeen shown to be just and reasonable. \n2. LARS shifts costs to interconnection customers in the DPP \nLARS shifts costs to interconnection customers in the DPP, to the disadvantage of \ngenerators in the DPP compared to those related to LARS projects. In the DPP, MISO models \nthe system headroom by assuming that all higher-queued generating facilities will enter \noperation.78 By contrast, in LARS, MISO proposes to model only DPP projects with a signed \nGIA.79 These differing approaches risk MISO allocating transmission headroom twice.80 Rather \nthan reconcile the double-allocation, MISO proposes that “[b]oth [projects] will be allowed to \nproceed, and neither will be required to pay additional costs due to the overallocation.”81 Failing \nto coordinate DPP and LARS shifts costs onto DPP customers. \nLARS generators are studied as though the DPP queue does not exist. They are assigned \nnone of the upgrades that their injections require in combination with the queued projects ahead \nof them. Those upgrades are left to the DPP customers, who are assigned them on the assumption \nthat the headroom in their models would still exist when they reach commercial operation. When \nLARS and DPP generators both come online and the system cannot deliver to both, the result is a \nreliability gap. This leads to unplanned curtailments and degraded operating conditions, which \nwill result in instances where the DPP customer would have been able to export energy and \n \n77 See Proposed GIP §§ 3.3.1, 3.12.2, 3.12.4; Proposed Attachment FF § I.D.1.b.ii; Transmittal \nLetter at 10, 25. \n78 Transmittal Letter at 12. \n79 Id. at 12–13. \n80 Drake Testimony at 32–33. \n81 Id. at 32–33."},{"page":19,"startToken":5230,"endToken":5612,"text":"19 \nreceive market payments, but for the LARS customer causing unmitigated congestion. While \ninterconnection customers do not have a right to any particular system topology, a decrease in \navailable headroom and degraded operating conditions represent cost shifts to generators in the \nDPP, because that same headroom is instead being allocated to LARS projects. \nIn the long term, MISO proposes that the constraints caused by the double-allocation of \nheadroom will be “formalized in a future MTEP project”82 whose cost falls on “the load within \nthe transmission pricing zone.”83 Reliance on future MTEP projects, however, is both \ninsufficient and too late. MISO’s reliance on later MTEP cycles will not cure the reliability gap \ncaused by the double-allocation.84 LARS projects, not having been studied with the advanced \nPhase 3 DPP interconnection projects reaching commercial operation in the same time frame, \nmay cause costly reliability upgrades in that future MTEP cycle, yet those costs will now become \nshifted to other transmission customers and market participants.85 While this presents its own set \nof cost-shifting concerns, it also does not address the fact that these further upgrades identified in \nlater MTEP cycles might take years to construct. During this time, the LARS generator would \nnot face operating restrictions, while a DPP project operating before its Network Upgrades are \ncomplete is subject to Quarterly Operating Limits and Annual ERIS/NRIS limits.86  \n \n82 Id. at 33. \n83 Transmittal Letter at 13. \n84 See Affidavit of Warren Hess ¶¶ 2–3, attached to Protest of Clean Energy Organizations, \nDocket No. ER25-1674-000 (Apr. 7, 2025), Accession No. 20250407-5242 (explaining that \nexcluding late-stage DPP projects from an expedited interconnection study produces reliability \ngaps, and that resolving the resulting overallocation of transmission headroom through the \nannual MTEP process does not cure them because of the limited scope of NRIS studies). \n85 Because LARS projects are studied without the DPP queue, the costs a LARS pair would bear \nif its full impacts were known are understated, and the balance is assigned to zonal load through \nlater MTEP projects. \n86 See GIP § 11.6 (Quarterly Operating Limit studies for Interconnection Customers operating \nbefore their Network Upgrades are complete); Proposed LLGIA art. 9.7.4.7 (operating limits on \na LARS Generating Facility apply only while the LARS Associated Load phases in); Transmittal"},{"page":20,"startToken":5612,"endToken":5971,"text":"20 \nMISO’s only justification for excluding the DPP queue from LARS models is “to reduce \nthe number of speculative projects in the modeling process.”87 MISO, however, concedes that \nproject withdrawal rates fall sharply as projects advance through the DPP, so that by the GIA \nstage they are “more closely aligned with the MTEP withdrawal rate.”88 MISO’s own consultant \nhas found that, of the capacity that withdrew from the 2017–2020 DPP cycles, only about 11 \npercent withdrew at Phase 3 or later.89 Nor are large loads somehow immune from withdrawals \nfrom the EPR process.90 Yet LARS includes EPR projects in its base model and includes the \nLARS Associated Load on the strength of a five-year contract and $250,000 fee, while excluding \nDPP generators that have posted milestone payments, completed two phases of study, and been \nassigned Network Upgrade costs. MISO also never explains why speed in LARS is so critical \nthat it justifies this result. When MISO sought comparable modeling shortcuts for ERAS, it \njustified them by reference to specific resource adequacy and reliability needs verified by the \nRelevant Electric Retail Regulatory Authority (“RERRA”). It also limited the process by capping \nERAS at 68 projects and sunsetting the whole program by the end of 2027. LARS is permanent, \nuncapped, and requires no showing of need at all. \nThe same problem can arise on the load side. LARS loads are studied in their own model, \nin parallel with the EPR and MTEP studies of other large loads, and the filing does not say \n \nLetter at 17 (QOL and AERIS limits apply to a LARS Generating Facility only during the \ntransition period after its load departs). \n87 Transmittal Letter at 12. \n88 Drake Testimony at 33. \n89 Charles River Associates, MISO Interconnection Queue: M2, M3 and M4 Security Deposits \nand Return Procedures – Evaluation and Suggested Adjustments, 8 (Aug. 26, 2023), available at \nhttps://cdn.misoenergy.org/20230719%20PAC%20Item%2006%20Charles%20River%20Associ\nates%20Queue%20Reform%20Report629633.pdf.  \n90 MISO, EPR Statistics Update, EPR-TSTF (Sept. 8, 2026) (listing withdrawn EPR requests), \navailable at https://cdn.misoenergy.org/20261006%20EPR-\nTSTF%20Item%2003%20MISO%20EPR%20Statistics785900.pdf."},{"page":21,"startToken":5971,"endToken":6296,"text":"21 \nwhether a LARS load will be reflected in concurrent EPR studies or vice versa. MISO’s own \nwitness confirms that the LARS load study is interim. The Large Load Project Review process is \n“currently under development,” and MISO is drafting it “such that the load study portion can be \neasily inserted into LARS at a later point in time.” Until then, two large loads studied in parallel \nmodels can be allocated the same transmission capacity. As on the generation side, MISO will \nrely on MTEP to reconcile these conflicts, resulting in BRP or Other projects paid for by the \nzone. \n3. Generation-load pair failures shift costs to other ratepayers \nLike conflicts between the DPP and LARS processes, generation-load pair failures shift \ncosts to other ratepayers. The premise of LARS is that studying the generator and the load \ntogether leads to fewer upgrades than either would need alone. The generator is treated as an \nalternative transmission solution for the load and the load’s withdrawals are the reason the grid \ncan accommodate the generator’s injections.91 However, when that pairing fails, LARS places \nthe resulting costs on neither party. If the generator fails to reach commercial operation or retires, \nMISO will rely on MTEP to approve a BRP or Other project at the zone’s expense. If the load \ndeparts within fifteen years, the generator may continue operating for a year, extended by a full \nDPP cycle, and may then obtain unconditional NRIS through the DPP.92 After fifteen years, the \ngenerator keeps full NRIS of up to 150 percent of the departed load’s peak demand with no \nfurther study and no cost at all.93 In each case, the transmission needed to accommodate an \nunpaired injection of that size was never studied and never assigned, and the Tariff leaves it to be \nformalized through MTEP and paid for by zonal load. \n \n91 Drake Testimony at 4. \n92 Transmittal Letter at 16–18. \n93 Id. at 16–18."},{"page":22,"startToken":6296,"endToken":6606,"text":"22 \nThis is not the ordinary risk that any generator may someday retire. A retirement removes \ninjections from the system and is reviewed through Attachment Y. LARS creates a standing \ninjection that was studied only on the assumption of a matched withdrawal, which the Tariff then \nallows to persist after the withdrawal is gone. Up until the fifteenth year, a generator whose \npaired load departs “would need to obtain new Interconnection Service through the DPP to \ncontinue making injections,” because MISO recognizes that the generator’s service was premised \non the load.94 Nothing about that premise changes in year fifteen. MISO defends the cutoff as “a \nstandard duration for large load contracts” and as long enough “to deter entities from invoking \nthe needs of a specific large load as a pretext to bypass the DPP queue.”95 But a deterrent to \npretext is not a reason to relieve a generator of the costs its unpaired injections impose. The \ncustomers who will bear those costs in year sixteen are the same customers the Show Cause \nOrder is meant to shield from paying the costs of data centers. \nB. LARS violates open access principles and enables undue discrimination \nLARS sets up a generation and load study process that would offer a limited number of \nprojects preferential access to the transmission system each year, year after year. It does so in a \nway untethered to any purported system need (that only LARS can address), while allowing self-\ninterested and often vertically integrated utilities to determine which projects can access the \nprocess without any mechanism for public, regulatory, or even MISO oversight. The result is a \nnever-ending process that would permanently and flagrantly violate longstanding open access \nprinciples and the FPA’s prohibition against undue discrimination with each LARS cycle. The \nCommission accordingly should reject the proposal.  \n \n94 Id. at 16. \n95 Id. at 17."},{"page":23,"startToken":6606,"endToken":6987,"text":"23 \n1. MISO’s LARS proposal is unduly discriminatory \nUnder the FPA, a rate design must be non-discriminatory and non-preferential as well as \nbeing just and reasonable.96 As the D.C. Circuit has observed, the Act “bristles with concern for \nundue discrimination.”97 The Commission and courts have consistently found that \n“[d]iscrimination is undue when there is a difference in rates or services among similarly situated \n[entities] that is not justified by some legitimate factor.”98 Different treatment is only justified if \nthe record “evidence show[s] factual differences to justify” it.99 \nAs Commissioner See has previously explained, when a “proposal’s goal is to get some \ninterconnection requests through the study process faster than others, the Commission is by \ndefinition asked to greenlight discrimination.”100 Here, LARS sets up a generation and load study \nprocess that will offer an unlimited number of generation projects and loads preferential access \nto the transmission system. LARS generators also obtain the additional significant benefit of \naccess to MISO’s Planning Resource Auction (“PRA”). LARS accomplishes this in a way that is \nunrelated to any technical or operational limitation or purported system need, and allows self-\ninterested vertically integrated utilities the ability to determine which projects can access the \nprocess without any mechanism for Commission, or even MISO, oversight. The result is a study \nprocess that violates the FPA’s prohibition against undue discrimination, and its longstanding \n \n96 See 16 U.S.C. § 824d(a)–(b); see also Ala. Elec. Co-op., Inc. v. FERC, 684 F.2d 20, 27 (D.C. \nCir. 1982). \n97 Associated Gas Distribs. v. FERC, 824 F.2d 981, 998 (D.C. Cir. 1987). \n98 El Paso Natural Gas Co., 104 FERC ¶ 61,045, at P 115 (2003) (footnote omitted); State Corp. \nComm’n v. FERC, 876 F.3d 332, 335 (D.C. Cir. 2017) (undue discrimination occurs only if the \nentities are “similarly situated”); see also Ark. Elec. Energy Consumers v. FERC, 290 F.3d 362, \n367 (D.C. Cir. 2002); Consol. Edison Co. of N.Y., Inc. v. FERC, 45 F.4th 265, 281 (D.C. Cir. \n2022). \n99 Elec. Consumers Res. Council v. FERC, 747 F.2d 1511, 1516 (D.C. Cir. 1984). \n100 Midcontinent Indep. Sys. Operator, Inc., 191 FERC ¶ 61,131 (2025) (See, Comm’r, \nconcurring at P 2)."},{"page":24,"startToken":6987,"endToken":7286,"text":"24 \nopen access principles. Specifically, the proposal runs afoul of the Commission’s prohibition on \nundue discrimination by: 1) allowing one class of similarly situated entities expedited access to \nthe MISO Planning Resource Auction; 2) allowing one class of load (load over 200 MW) \nexpedited access to the transmission system; and 3) allowing LSEs the ability to favor their own \nresources over competitors in pairing them with large loads. The Commission should reject the \nproposal for any of these three independent reasons. \na. The LARS framework unduly discriminates among similarly \nsituated resources seeking to participate in MISO’s Planning \nResource Auction \nMISO’s proposal is unduly discriminatory because it grants generators associated with \nqualifying large loads an accelerated pathway to obtain access to MISO’s Planning Resource \nAuction market that is unavailable to similarly situated generators participating in the ordinary \nDPP process. As noted in the LARS Tariff filing, “A LARS Generating Facility will have the \nability to participate in the Planning Reserve Auction (“PRA”) and support resource \nadequacy.”101 This benefit flows from MISO’s choice to allow LARS generators to receive NRIS \nservice. However, MISO justifies LARS as a large load-serving interconnection pathway, not as \na general market-entry pathway. By allowing LARS generators unfettered NRIS interconnection \nrights, as opposed to a more limited interconnection framework, LARS is not a narrowly tailored \nmechanism to accelerate the integration of large loads onto the bulk power system; instead, it \nalso creates a secondary, unrelated, and unnecessary substantial benefit to those resources by \nproviding them a pathway for those generating resources to participate in MISO’s broader \ncapacity construct. MISO provides no justification for providing access to LARS generators to \n \n101 Drake Testimony at 13 (note Ms. Drake mistakenly identifies the auction as the “Planning \nReserve Auction,” when the proper naming convention is the “Planning Resource Auction”)."},{"page":25,"startToken":7286,"endToken":7610,"text":"25 \nthe PRA via its allocated NRIS service. Nor could it, because as described below this benefit is \nunrelated to the regulatory purpose of MISO’s proposal. \nDespite repeatedly describing LARS as a strictly limited interconnection construct tied to \nservice for a specific large load, MISO specifically grants LARS resources NRIS rights with its \nfull suite of benefits. Providing such rights is untethered to the alleged regulatory purpose of \nLARS, and therefore inappropriate. Specifically, MISO states that “[t]he purpose of LARS is to \ncreate a fast and efficient process for viable, shovel ready projects.”102 More generally, MISO \nmakes clear that this proposal is responsive to the Department of Energy’s Speed to Power \ninitiative, by “providing a process through which significant new large loads and generation \nintended to support that load can be studied on an accelerated and coordinated basis.”103 As such, \nit is clear that the LARS program’s regulatory purpose is not to bolster system reliability in \ngeneral, and therefore, MISO cannot rely on that purpose for providing the outsized, \nmismatched, and substantial benefit of full NRIS service rights. \nMoreover, because of the way in which the LARS large loads are contractually tied to the \ngenerators, it is entirely inconsistent and irrational to allow those same generators full PRA \nparticipation rights. If a LARS generator receives expedited interconnection treatment because it \nis paired with and is intended to “serve”104 a particular large load in a specific LRZ, permitting \nthat same generator to also compete in the regional capacity market gives it the opportunity to \nessentially double-dip. This is particularly true for the types of large loads that MISO anticipates \nconnecting, which have disproportionately high load factors and therefore should not have the \nexcess capacity to bid into the PRA. \n \n102 Id. at 15. \n103 Transmittal Letter at 2. \n104 See id. at 9 (“The agreement must demonstrate that the output of the LARS Generating \nFacility will serve the LARS Associated Load.”)."},{"page":26,"startToken":7610,"endToken":7922,"text":"26 \nThe LARS generator therefore receives the principal benefit sought by any generator \n(including those in the DPP queue): the ability to obtain deliverable interconnection rights and \nparticipate in MISO’s capacity construct. And it receives that substantial market benefit through \nan accelerated 120-day process unavailable to other generators. This preferential market access \nbenefit, which is unrelated to the regulatory purpose of LARS, is further compounded by the fact \nthat LARS generators will also have quicker access to additional revenue by virtue of their \nshorter interconnection timeline while also enjoying lower overall financing costs because such \ngenerators will need to maintain study deposits for shorter periods of time. \nMISO has not identified any reasonable justification for granting one class of resources \nexpedited access to PRA participation. The sole differentiating factor is that LARS generators \npossess a contractual relationship with a qualifying large load, which generators in the ordinary \nqueue do not possess. However, the existence of a commercial arrangement with a data center or \nother large customer does not alter the generator’s ability to contribute to regional resource \nadequacy, and if anything the likelihood of a LARS generator being able to provide that capacity \nis necessarily lower. Nor does it explain why such a resource should be allowed to receive the \nfull benefits of NRIS service, including but not limited to access to the PRA, more quickly than \ncompeting generators intending to serve regional load generally. A generator paired with a data \ncenter through a private commercial arrangement is not materially different, from a resource \nadequacy perspective, from a generator developed by an independent power producer seeking to \nserve regional load generally. \nFor example, MISO offers no reasonable justification for why “Generator A” may \nreceive expedited NRIS and PRA eligibility through a 120-day LARS process because it signed a \ncontract with a 200 MW data center, while “Generator B” seeking the identical interconnection"},{"page":27,"startToken":7922,"endToken":8191,"text":"27 \nproduct and identical PRA participation rights must proceed through the DPP because it does not \nhave that same contractual relationship. Simply put, MISO offers no meaningful reliability \ndistinction between the two generators sufficient to justify drastically different interconnection \ntimelines and rights. Accordingly, MISO has failed to establish that generators seeking identical \ncapacity-market participation rights are differently situated in a manner to justify the proposed \ndiscriminatory treatment. \nMISO has failed to demonstrate that this disparate treatment is supported by any \ncorresponding reliability or operational distinction, rendering the proposal unduly discriminatory \nunder section 205 of the Federal Power Act. \nb. The LARS framework unduly discriminates against load \nunder 200 MW that is seeking to interconnect in MISO \nThe LARS proposal is designed to provide “expedited review of the addition of 200 MW \nor greater loads together with new generation resources that are electrically proximate to those \nloads.”105 This framework is unduly preferential because “shovel ready” load that is under 200 \nMW cannot take advantage of this expedited interconnection product. MISO provides no \npermissible justification for allowing only larger customers to skip the ordinary interconnection \nline. \nThe FPA prohibits MISO from treating customers preferentially. MISO’s conduct here is \ntextbook preferential treatment. There is nothing preventing a load under 200 MW from meeting \neach of the other eligibility requirements by: requesting interconnection service not greater than \n150 percent of its peak demand, being located in the same Local Resource Zone as its \ncontracted-for generation, providing a $250,000 application fee, having a Point of \nInterconnection approved by the Transmission Owner, having full site control, meeting EMT \n \n105 Transmittal Letter at 1."},{"page":28,"startToken":8191,"endToken":8507,"text":"28 \nmodeling requirements, and specifying a commercial operation date not later than three years \nfrom its interconnection request.106 The only limiting criterion is the load size.107  \nAs noted above, the alleged “purpose of LARS is to create a fast and efficient process for \nviable, shovel ready projects.”108 MISO fails to identify any technical or operational limitation \nfor loads under 200 MW—that otherwise meet the criteria above—that would prevent them from \nbeing just as “viable” and “shovel ready” as loads over 200 MW. \nMISO answers the question, “why is the LARS load size limited to at least 200 MW,” by \nstating that the threshold was chosen because loads of that size “would benefit from a \ncoordinated study process and that data center loads in general come in 200 MW blocks.”109 \nHowever, smaller loads (e.g., 100 MW loads or pooled loads of 200 MW and larger) could also \nbenefit in the way MISO describes from a coordinated study process as well. MISO offers no \noperational or technical justification for the discriminatory 200 MW limit, nor can it. Other \nstatements by MISO regarding the 200 MW threshold are circular and do not provide a \nreasonable justification: for example, MISO states that “limiting LARS load participants to at \nleast 200 MW at one POW ensures that the load coming online is sufficiently large to warrant \ninclusion in LARS.”110 Absent a clear justification for this preferential treatment, it remains \nundue and therefore must be rejected. \n \n106 Drake Testimony at 21–22. \n107 Nor does MISO explain why smaller resources could not pool together to reach 200 MW, \nother than a conclusory statement that such pooling would slow down the study process. \nHowever, beyond this conclusory statement MISO does not support this restriction with any data \nor analysis. \n108 Drake Testimony at 15 (emphasis added). \n109 Id. at 24. \n110 Transmittal Letter at 11."},{"page":29,"startToken":8507,"endToken":8821,"text":"29 \nc. The LARS framework provides LSEs the unchecked ability to \nfavor their own generation and discriminate against \ncompetitors \nTo protect against undue discrimination, the Commission set a number of open access \nrequirements, which ensure that generation owned by transmission owners is not given \npreferential access to the transmission system. For nearly a quarter of a century, FERC has \nrigorously implemented this statutory prohibition by requiring open access in generator \ninterconnection processes.111 As the D.C. Circuit has acknowledged, “[o]ne of the Commission’s \nchief goals in promulgating standard interconnection rules was to minimize opportunities for \nundue discrimination by transmission operators, and it does that in part by protecting relatively \nunencumbered entry into the market.”112 \nFERC has therefore been wary of proposals that open the door to undue discrimination by \nexpediting certain generators’ interconnections. When FERC recently accepted expedited \ngenerator interconnection procedures to meet a demonstrated reliability need in the PJM \nInterconnection (“PJM”) region, it did so only after concluding that: (1) the processes were \nnarrowly tailored to ensure comparable access to interconnection service for resources seeking to \nshow they are capable of meeting the identified reliability need; and (2) the proposal minimized \nharm to other interconnection customers that could not participate in the expedited process.113 In \nother words, to the extent FERC countenances discrimination through expedited interconnection \nqueues, that discrimination must be closely scrutinized to ensure it is due.114 \n \n111 Standardization of Generator Interconnection Agreements and Procedures, Order No. 2003, \n104 FERC ¶ 61,103, at PP 8–12 (2003); Improvements to Generator Interconnection Procedures \nand Agreements, Order No. 2023, 184 FERC ¶ 61,054, at P 37 (2023). \n112 Xcel Energy Servs. v. FERC, 41 F.4th 548, 559 (D.C. Cir. 2022) (cleaned up). \n113 PJM Interconnection, L.L.C., 190 FERC ¶ 61,084, at PP 123, 245 (2025). \n114 See id. (Rosner & Phillips, Comm’rs, concurring at P 2)."},{"page":30,"startToken":8821,"endToken":9179,"text":"30 \nHere, LARS allows vertically integrated utilities, entities with an incentive to \ndiscriminate against competitors, to serve as the lead “coordinator,” providing them with the \nauthority to discriminate against competitors who also seek to participate in the LARS process. \nAdditionally, the LARS proposal is not narrowly tailored in any of the ways the Commission has \npreviously required in its limited approval of departures from open access principles. Given these \ndeficiencies, the Commission should reject the LARS proposal. \ni. The Transmission Customer, often the LSE, is the only \nparty that may submit a LARS application to MISO \nand is therefore subject to perverse incentives to \ndiscriminate against competitors \nMISO proposes to require that a transmission customer, which “often” is an LSE, \nsponsors and “submit[s]” the LARS application.115 In other words, the LSE is the gatekeeper for \nparticipation in LARS, because without it “initiat[ing] the LARS application” the process cannot \nproceed.116 The Commission instituted open access to prevent transmission-owning entities, such \nas many LSEs, from gatekeeping which generators can and cannot interconnect to the grid.117 \nThis is because, as the Commission has noted, utilities have a distinct incentive to stymie \ninterconnection to the queue from independent generators and otherwise prefer their own \ngeneration.118 \n \n115 Transmittal Letter at 6, 8. \n116 Id. at 6. \n117 See, e.g., Alliant Energy Corp. v. FERC, 253 F.3d 748, 753 (D.C. Cir. 2001) (“Order [No.] \n888 was expressly designed to remedy undue discrimination in access to the monopoly owned \ntransmission wires that control whether and to whom electricity can be transported in interstate \ncommerce.”) (internal quotations omitted). \n118 Order No. 888’s preamble states: “The legal and policy cornerstone of these rules is to \nremedy undue discrimination in access to the monopoly owned transmission wires that control \nwhether and to whom electricity can be transported in interstate commerce. A second critical \naspect of the rules is to address recovery of the transition costs of moving from a monopoly-\nregulated regime to one in which all sellers can compete on a fair basis and in which electricity is \nmore competitively priced.” Promoting Wholesale Competition Through Open Access Non-"},{"page":31,"startToken":9179,"endToken":9520,"text":"31 \nMISO explains that it has allowed the transmission customer this pivotal role “[b]ecause \nonly the Transmission Customer can procure Transmission Service under established Tariff \nprocesses.”119 But MISO’s response does not reasonably explain why the setup MISO \nproposed—which, as described below, is rife with opportunities for discrimination—is needed.  \nFor example, many LSEs have their own generation that they would prefer to use to serve \nload, and in particular lucrative large loads like data centers. Therefore, the structure of LARS, \nwhich gives them final gatekeeping authority, will allow them to either block, undercut, or \notherwise disadvantage competitors, principally independent resource developers, from being \nable to fairly participate in LARS. For example, if a large load is given competitive offers from \nan LSE and an independent power producer, the large load will have an incentive to choose the \nLSE even if the independent power producer’s offer is more competitive considering the ultimate \nleverage the LSE holds over the process.  \nMoreover, LARS does not give any entity—from MISO, to the Commission itself—clear \nvisibility to determine if a Transmission Customer is discriminating by preferring only its own \ngeneration projects for LARS. An agency, like the Commission, may not subdelegate its \ndecision-making and oversight authority “to outside entities—private or sovereign—absent \naffirmative evidence of authority to do so.”120 Additionally, it is unclear whether, under the \nstructure of the LARS proposal, the Commission could even utilize FPA section 206 to conduct \nan after-the-fact investigation into whether a Transmission Customer discriminated against a \nLARS applicant if that same Transmission Customer is not subject to Commission jurisdiction \n \nDiscriminatory Transmission Services by Public Utilities, Order No. 888, 61 Fed. Reg. 21,540, \n21,541 (May 10, 1996), FERC Stats. & Regs. ¶ 31,036, at 31,634–35 (1996). \n119 Transmittal Letter at 6. \n120 See U.S. Telecom Ass’n v. FCC, 359 F.3d 554, 566 (D.C. Cir. 2004); see also Entergy Servs., \nInc., 120 FERC ¶ 61,020, at P 28 (2007) (“[R]atemaking obligations … cannot be delegated to a \nstate commission.”)."},{"page":32,"startToken":9520,"endToken":9851,"text":"32 \npursuant to Federal Power Act section 201(f). The end result therefore is likely both unknowable \nand unreviewable. \nIndeed, this is a similar problem to one that is currently being litigated with regard to \nMISO’s ERAS proposal, which is currently pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the \nD.C. Circuit.121 To the extent the petitioners in that case prevail on their structural challenge to \nERAS, it will fundamentally undermine the entire framework underpinning this proposal. \nii. The LARS framework is not sufficiently narrowly \ntailored \nFERC has allowed some limited departures from open access requirements if such \ndeviations are narrowly tailored to meet an important need, and principally, this has been when \nthere is an imminent reliability need.122 But even in these situations, the Commission has \nrequired that the intervention be narrowly tailored to meet that need. As discussed above, LARS \ndoes not claim to be serving a specific reliability need, and, as a result, it is inherently impossible \nto narrowly tailor for that need.  \nBut LARS also does not have any of the other indicia of a narrowly tailored program that \nthe Commission has previously required. For example, LARS is not time-limited, as MISO’s \nmost recent queue-jumping proposal ERAS was. Additionally, while LARS includes a yearly \nthreshold of three cycles of a maximum of ten projects per cycle, it does not limit the total \nnumber of projects or include a cap on the total MW of load proposed to be interconnected. \nMISO does not even attempt to identify the outer limits of when or how this queue-jumping \nframework will no longer be necessary, or otherwise explain why it could not undertake such an \nanalysis. The D.C. Circuit has already admonished such an open-ended approach and held that it \n \n121 See Clean Wisconsin v. FERC, No. 25-1264 (D.C. Cir.) (pending). \n122 See, e.g., PJM Interconnection, L.L.C., 190 FERC ¶ 61,084 (2025); Midcontinent Indep. Sys. \nOperator, Inc., 192 FERC ¶ 61,064 (2025)."},{"page":33,"startToken":9851,"endToken":10212,"text":"33 \n“cannot overlook such unexplained inconsistency” when the Commission approves a policy that \nextends beyond the “limited period of time” of identified need.123 \nMISO’s proposal also is expressly not limited to physically connected and electrically \nproximate pairs of load and generation. Instead, LARS generators and load are merely required \nto be in the same general Local Resource Zone.124 Indeed, MISO recognizes that this choice does \nnot reflect a narrowly tailored approach where it notes that “there [were] other ways it could \nhave limited the pairing such as requiring the generation and LARS Associated Load to be \nlocated in the same Local Balancing Authority area or through requiring that the location of the \nGenerating Facilities be within a specific number of substations of the LARS Associated \nLoad.”125 Without such protections to more narrowly tailor the scope and effect of the proposal, \nLARS strays far afield from even the limited exceptions to open access principles which the \nCommission has previously blessed. \nC. LARS is an unjustified departure from the Commission’s pro forma \ninterconnection procedures and does not accomplish the purposes of Order \nNo. 2023 \nInterconnection is a “critical component of open access transmission service.”126 The \nCommission standardizes interconnection through pro forma interconnection procedures and \nagreements that every public utility transmission provider must adopt.127 An RTO or ISO may \ndepart from the pro forma documents under the “independent entity variation” standard, but only \n \n123 Ky. Mun. Energy Agency v. FERC, 45 F.4th 162, 186 (D.C. Cir. 2022). \n124 Transmittal Letter at 10. \n125 Id. \n126 Order No. 2023, 184 FERC ¶ 61,054, at P 11& n.11 (quoting Order No. 2003, 104 FERC ¶ \n61,103 at P 9 (2003)). \n127 Order No. 2003, 104 FERC ¶ 61,103, order on reh’g, Order No. 2003-A, 106 FERC ¶ 61,220 \n(2004), order on reh’g, Order No. 2003-B, 109 FERC ¶ 61,287 (2004), order on reh’g, Order \nNo. 2003-C, 111 FERC ¶ 61,401 (2005), aff’d sub nom. Nat’l Ass’n of Regulatory Util. Comm’rs \nv. FERC, 475 F.3d 1277 (D.C. Cir. 2007); Order No. 2023, 184 FERC ¶ 61,054, order on reh’g, \nOrder No. 2023-A, 186 FERC ¶ 61,199 (2024)."},{"page":34,"startToken":10212,"endToken":10577,"text":"34 \nwhere it “demonstrates that the proposed variation: (1) is just and reasonable and not unduly \ndiscriminatory or preferential; and (2) accomplishes the purposes of the order.”128 While this \nstandard is more flexible than a “consistent with or superior to” standard, the Commission has \nstated that “[i]t is not a sufficient justification to state that a variation conforms to current \nRTO/ISO practices or to the RTO’s/ISO’s tariff definitions and terminology.”129 The \nCommission has applied the standard to recent expedited interconnection proposals, including \nMISO’s ERAS.130 Here, LARS is a deviation from Order No. 2023, which the D.C. Circuit \nupheld this summer.131 \nMISO has not shown that it meets the independent entity variation standard with respect \nto Order No. 2023. MISO asserts that LARS is “just and reasonable” and “not unduly \ndiscriminatory,” but it never identifies LARS as a variation from the pro forma procedures and \nnever explains how a permanent, serial, first-come, first-served interconnection process \naccomplishes the purposes of a rule that abolished serial, first-come, first-served interconnection \nprocesses. MISO’s only mention of Order No. 2023 is in a footnote acknowledging that MISO \nbuilt the LLGIA from a version of its pro forma GIA that predates its own Order No. 2023 \ncompliance filing (pending at the Commission) and promising “to reconcile these versions as \nappropriate once they are accepted.”132 The Commission cannot determine whether a variation \n \n128 PJM Interconnection, L.L.C., 195 FERC ¶ 61,031, at P 10 (Apr. 16, 2026) (quoting ISO New \nEngland Inc., 164 FERC ¶ 61,222, at P 9 (2018)); Order No. 2023, 184 FERC ¶ 61,054 at P 1764 \n(citing Order No. 2003, 104 FERC ¶ 61,103, at P 826 (2003); and Reform of Generator \nInterconnection Procedures and Agreements, Order No. 845, 163 FERC ¶ 61,043, at P 556 \n(2018)). \n129 Cal. Indep. Sys. Operator Corp., 170 FERC ¶ 61,112, at P 11 (2020). \n130 Midcontinent Indep. Sys. Operator, Inc., 191 FERC ¶ 61,131 (2025) (rejecting MISO’s initial \nERAS proposal). \n131 Advanced Energy United v. FERC, No. 23-1282 (D.C. Cir. July 31, 2026) (per curiam) \n(denying all petitions for review of Order No. 2023). \n132 Transmittal Letter at 24 n.95."},{"page":35,"startToken":10577,"endToken":10876,"text":"35 \naccomplishes the purposes of Order No. 2023 when the baseline from which it varies has not \nitself been conformed to Order No. 2023. MISO’s failure to address the governing standard is \nitself sufficient reason to reject the filing. \nWere the Commission to reach the merits of LARS’s status as a valid independent entity \nvariation, the Commission would find that it does not. Order No. 2023’s central reform was to \nreplace serial, first-come, first-served studies with first-ready, first-served cluster studies, \nbecause the Commission found that serial processing was a primary cause of the unjust and \nunreasonable backlogs for generator interconnection.133 MISO already operates a cluster study \nprocess, and it describes the DPP’s “three-phase, grouped study process” as the mechanism that \n“identif[ies] and remove[s] speculative or non-feasible projects as more information becomes \navailable.”134 LARS, on the other hand, moves in the opposite direction, to a first-come, first-\nserved process. Each request under LARS is studied “individually and in a serial fashion based \non their submission date.”135 MISO argues that this serial process “avoids the dependence on the \noverall cluster of generating facilities moving forward.”136 \nUnlike other expedited interconnection processes approved by the Commission, LARS is \npermanent. For example, the Commission accepted PJM’s Reliability Resource Initiative as a \none-time departure, and Commissioners Rosner and Phillips wrote that they would not have \nfound it just and reasonable otherwise.137 While the Commission accepted MISO’s revised \nERAS proposal, ERAS includes a sunset date and puts a cap on the number of participants. \n \n133 Order No. 2023, 184 FERC ¶ 61,054 at PP 44–55, 165 (2023). \n134 Drake Testimony at 9. \n135 Transmittal Letter at 12. \n136 Drake Testimony at 15. \n137 PJM Interconnection, L.L.C., 190 FERC ¶ 61,084 (2025); id. (Rosner & Phillips, Comm’rs, \nconcurring)."},{"page":36,"startToken":10876,"endToken":11155,"text":"36 \nMISO asks the Commission to allow a permanent serial side-queue it has allowed only as a \ntemporary and bounded exception in recent decisions. \nLARS is also counter to the need for certainty that the Commission insisted on in Order \nNo. 2023.138 LARS reduces certainty for DPP participants in at least two ways. First, as shown \nabove, LARS generators are studied without the DPP queue and DPP customers are studied \nwithout LARS generators, so that the upgrade assignments in both processes rest on models \nMISO concedes are separate and distinct.139 Second, LARS has no restudy process and MISO \nwill tender LLGIAs before affected system results are available, which it concedes is “necessary \nto maintain the accelerated speed of the LARS process.”140 MISO seeks to trade certainty for \nspeed for a privileged few data centers and their paired generation. \nOrder Nos. 2003 and 2023 were also designed to accomplish an open access purpose of \nensuring non-discriminatory access to the transmission system. Here too, MISO’s LARS \nproposal does not accomplish the purposes of the Commission’s interconnection orders. As \ndiscussed supra, LARS does not meet the goals of enabling open access to the transmission \nsystem because it places access to the LARS interconnection process under the gatekeeping \ncontrol of self-interested vertically integrated utilities. It grants preferential treatment to \ngenerators interconnecting through LARS compared to generators seeking to interconnect \nthrough the DPP process.  \nAdditionally, the Commission’s interconnection orders were designed to streamline \ninterconnection processes and create a standard, unified interconnection process. By creating a \n \n138 Order No. 2023, 184 FERC ¶ 61,054, at PP 37–45 (2023). \n139 Drake Testimony at 32–33. \n140 Transmittal Letter at 16, 25–26."},{"page":37,"startToken":11155,"endToken":11474,"text":"37 \nnew, parallel interconnection process in LARS, MISO’s proposal works crosswise to this \nsimplifying goal.  \nFinally, Order No. 2023 was designed to increase the speed of interconnection for new \ngeneration interconnection requests. While LARS might fast track a limited set of privileged \ninterconnection requests, the creation of a new interconnection queue will put competing \npressures on MISO’s staff and compute time to process standard DPP requests. And while MISO \nstated that LARS deposits will fund “additional tools, staffing, and process enhancements” rather \nthan drawing on DPP resources,141 MISO still undermines the purpose of Order No. 2023 to the \nextent DPP is not receiving these marginal additional resources to speed DPP timelines.142 \nD. MISO’s LARS proposal is not responsive to Commission direction regarding \n“electrically proximate” generation and load from the Show Cause Order \nIn the Show Cause Order, the Commission found that MISO’s Tariff “appears to be \nunjust and unreasonable” because it did not contain provisions allowing an interconnection \ncustomer to serve “an electrically proximate large load.”143 Rather than directly responding to the \nCommission’s Order, MISO invents a new expansive definition of “proximate” in an attempt to \ndemonstrate that its proposal is responsive to the Commission’s Order. It is not. \nThe Commission defined electrically proximate load as a large load “that is sufficiently \nelectrically close to the interconnection customer’s requested point of interconnection, such that \nthe impact on the transmission system of the combination of the generating facility and the load, \nwith the exception of the transmission facilities between the two, will be effectively the same as \nif they were located at the same substation.”144 MISO chose not to conform to this definition and \n \n141 Drake Testimony at 32. \n142 See Drake Testimony at 12 (noting that “the MISO DPP interconnection queue does not move \nthis fast and is designed for a 365-day timeline”). \n143 Show Cause Order at P 113. \n144 Id. at P 112."},{"page":38,"startToken":11474,"endToken":11787,"text":"38 \ninstead “anchor[ed] the proximate requirement with the [Local Resource Zone],”145 not the two-\nsubstation distance the Commission suggests as an example of electrically proximate load and \ngeneration.  \nMISO argues that this new definition is appropriate because the Commission stated that it \nwould “consider proposed revisions to this definition to ‘ensure it is appropriately tailored to \nMISO’s transmission system.’”146 However, as MISO itself concedes, its definition of proximate \nis not grounded in the unique structure of its transmission system, and instead MISO simply “did \nnot want to limit the pairing of generation with associated load to a specific number of \nsubstations because that is likely too geographically narrow and could limit how MISO may \noptimize common transmission solutions.”147 As such, even MISO’s novel definition of \nproximate is inconsistent with the flexibility afforded by the Commission on this issue. \nAdditionally, MISO justifies this choice by arguing that tying LARS Associated Load to \nLocal Resource Zones “avoids price separation between the paired generation and LARS \nAssociated Load.”148 However, Local Resource Zones do not always align with transmission \npricing zones and cost allocation zones.149 Only zones 2, 8, 11, and 12 have only one \ntransmission pricing zone within the LRZ. Other LRZs with multiple transmission pricing zones \nwill not easily be able to ensure that transmission costs associated with large load additions are \nassigned to that load. Local Resource Zones are intended to reflect capacity and reliability needs, \nnot transmission cost recovery. MISO intentionally separates these constructs because they \n \n145 Transmittal Letter at 21. \n146 Id. (quoting Show Cause Order at P 112) (emphasis added). \n147 Id. \n148 Id. (quoting Drake Testimony at 40–41). \n149 See generally Use of “Zones” and “Regions” at MISO, OMS CapCOM (Jan. 11, 2021), \navailable at \nhttps://www.misostates.org/images/stories/meetings/Cost_Allocation_Principles_Committee/202\n1/MISO_Zones_and_Regions.pdf."},{"page":39,"startToken":11787,"endToken":12082,"text":"39 \naddress different reliability and economic objectives, and MISO’s proposed blending of Local \nResource Zones with economic objectives is therefore arbitrary. Indeed, the only plausible \nreason to tie the proximate definition to Local Resource Zones is that those zones are relevant to \nparticipation in MISO’s capacity construct, which, as described above, is also inappropriate and \narbitrary. \nE. LARS threatens reliability and efficient planning \nLARS would be at least the fifth separate path onto the MISO transmission system, \nalongside the DPP, ERAS, the pending Zero-Injection Generator Interconnection Agreement \n(“ZGIA”) process, and EPR for load. A sixth, the Large Load Project Review (“LLPR”) is \ncurrently under development.150 MISO’s addition of another parallel interconnection process \ntakes the region further away from efficient transmission planning. MISO’s statement that any \nconstraints that are not addressed in the LARS study due to overallocation would be reconciled \nin the MTEP process does not promise that these solutions would be minimal upgrades.151 It \npromises only that they would be reconciled through the MTEP process. There is a risk under \nMISO’s current proposal that unresolved reliability contingencies identified in a subsequent \nMTEP process could require mitigation through backbone upgrades or other high-cost solutions \nresulting from the cumulative impacts of LARS and other interconnection requests, the costs of \nwhich non-LARS transmission customers would ultimately have to pay. Due to the permanent \nnature of MISO’s LARS proposal, there is a risk that non-LARS transmission customers could \nbe permanently disadvantaged by the process and bear the costs of transmission investments \nneeded to resolve issues caused, at least in part, by a LARS request, or series of interconnection \nrequests. Each new path to interconnection takes MISO further from efficient planning. \n \n150 Drake Testimony at 38, 44; Transmittal Letter at 19–20. \n151 Transmittal Letter at 13."},{"page":40,"startToken":12082,"endToken":12396,"text":"40 \n1. Parallel independent studies produce unreliable results and reliability risks \nInterconnection studies assign network upgrades on the basis of cumulative impacts. By \nputting some generators in one model and other generators in another, MISO cannot capture \nthose impacts. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (“NERC”) model \nvalidation guidance states that future-year planning cases “should contain the same component \nrepresentations as the most recently validated model, unless there is a specific reason for the data \nto be different,” and should represent “the cumulative planned changes to the system” through \nthe period studied.152 By excluding the DPP, LARS does the opposite of NERC’s procedures. \nNeither set of studies sees the other until MTEP, which is after LLGIAs have been executed and \nDPP customers have been assigned their upgrades. \nThe consequences of this mutual blindness of the models are not limited to the cost shifts \ndescribed above. A constraint that appears only when the two sets of projects are combined \nmight be a contingency for which no mitigation was identified and no upgrade was built, leaving \nreal-time operators without the reconfiguration options the planning process assumed. In the \nworst case, cascading blackouts could result. A more moderate negative outcome might be load \nshed as the only tool available to manage unstudied conditions. MISO does not appear to \ndescribe the dispatch and case assumptions for the LARS load study. MTEP-based load studies \nand DPP interconnection studies in MISO are built on different cases and different dispatch \nassumptions. Without an explanation of which assumptions LARS will use, the Commission has \nno basis to find that a load study built upon MISO’s existing EPR process will identify the \nconstraints that a DPP study of the same generator would identify. \n \n152 NERC, Procedures for Validation of Powerflow and Dynamics Cases § 1, at 1, available at \nhttps://www.nerc.com/globalassets/our-\nwork/assessments/nerc_model_validation_procedures_v3.pdf."},{"page":41,"startToken":12396,"endToken":12732,"text":"41 \nSiloing also creates questions around generator retirement. If a LARS generator retires \nwithin the fifteen-year pairing period, the Tariff says the load may go through MTEP, but it does \nnot say whether the Attachment Y retirement study and the MTEP restudy of the load occur in \nsequence or in parallel, or who bears the upgrades needed to keep serving a load whose MTEP \napproval rested on a generator that no longer exists.153 Once future MTEP cycles combine \ngenerators from the serial and cluster processes into a single model, a withdrawal or retirement in \neither process can require restudy in the others. MISO has not addressed these interactions. \n2. Siloed, expedited processes are already driving MISO’s largest \ntransmission investments outside regional planning \nMISO acknowledges that “large loads have overtaken the EPR process.”154 In MTEP26, \nroughly 54 percent of the $14.7 billion of approved transmission investments originated in EPR, \nas did eight of the ten largest Appendix A projects, representing approximately $6 billion.155 \nTransmission additions to the MISO grid of this magnitude will have a dramatic impact on \npower flows throughout MISO’s system, and continuing the analysis of large load needs in an \nisolated process like that outlined in LARS risks harmful impacts to other transmission \ncustomers. By MISO’s admission in its LARS filing, the EPR process has become increasingly \nchallenging due to the volume and type of facilities proposed through this process. Take, for \ninstance, the proposed 500 kV Smalling–El Dorado and 500 kV West Fork–St. Landry lines and \nthe 230/500 kV West Fork substation facility evaluated through MISO’s EPR process. These two \ntransmission lines span over 200 miles across Louisiana and Arkansas, and the 230/500 kV \n \n153 Proposed GIP § 3.12.7.4; Proposed Attachment FF § I.D.1.b.ii(g). \n154 Drake Testimony at 26. \n155 MISO, MTEP26 Report Review, Planning Advisory Committee, at 4, 8–9 (Oct. 7, 2026), \navailable at \nhttps://cdn.misoenergy.org/20261007%20PAC%20Item%2006%20MTEP26%20Report%20Rev\niew785938.pdf."},{"page":42,"startToken":12732,"endToken":13049,"text":"42 \nsubstation is a very large facility comprising $1.1 billion in investment.156 Backbone facilities of \nthis size manage larger flows of energy that by their nature have more regional impacts, \ncomplicating MISO’s transmission planning process. To the extent LARS will include projects \nof this scope, considering them through siloed, expedited processes could disadvantage other \ntransmission customers by separating these projects from a regional process where system \nimpacts could be considered in an integrated manner. In addition, expedited processes like LARS \nleave little time for MISO to evaluate alternatives that may be most efficient and cost effective, \nas required under Order No. 1000.157 \nGiven the size of recent proposed EPR transmission investments and ERAS generator \ninterconnection requests in MISO that can be linked to load interconnections of several \ngigawatts, there could be dramatic topology changes in the system that could significantly alter \ntransmission flows on MISO’s system if not studied in an integrated manner. A high \nconcentration of load in one area of the grid could create constraints that limit import capability \nto other load zones on the system, creating a situation where either greater investment in \ngeneration or transmission is required to maintain system reliability. Highly constrained areas \nlike these exist today along the industrial corridor of the Gulf Coast, and MISO is currently in the \nprocess of assessing system needs related to these load pockets in the wake of load shed events \non May 25, 2025158 and during Winter Storm Uri in 2021.159 Continuing a process where \n \n156 Id. \n157 Order No. 1000, 136 FERC ¶ 61,051, at P 6 (2011). \n158 MISO, May 25 Transmission Load Shed Event, Reliability Subcommittee (July 17, 2025), \navailable at \nhttps://cdn.misoenergy.org/20250717%20RSC%20Item%2007%20May%2025%20Load%20She\nd%20Event707855.pdf. \n159 MISO, The February Arctic Event (Feb. 14–18, 2021), available at \nhttps://cdn.misoenergy.org/2021%20Arctic%20Event%20Report554429.pdf."},{"page":43,"startToken":13049,"endToken":13364,"text":"43 \ntransmission needs for gigawatts of load are considered in a siloed process risks the creation or \nexacerbation of load pockets across MISO’s system. \n3. Integrated planning processes are available and MISO should adopt them \nThere are viable alternatives to siloed transmission planning, which is inefficient and \ncostly. In March, the Commission accepted SPP’s Consolidated Planning Process (“CPP”), \nwhich, in Commissioner Rosner’s description, “eliminat[es] the silos between the transmission \nplanning process and the generator interconnection process” by “synthesizing and streamlining \nthem into one recurring three-year planning cycle” that “recognizes that generation and load \nshare one transmission system, and plans for both of their needs holistically.”160 Commissioner \nRosner “strongly encourage[d] other transmission providers to take note of the innovative \napproach the CPP promises, and to consider developing similar integrated solutions tailored to \nmeet the pressing needs within their own footprints.”161 Commissioner Rosner noted that SPP \nexpected to deliver interconnection agreements within nine to ten months of the close of its \napplication window, to cut study costs by millions of dollars, and to avoid more than $100 \nmillion in duplicative transmission costs each planning cycle.162 PJM, responding to its own \nshow cause order, has proposed to “[c]onsolidate generation and merchant transmission \ninterconnection along with long-term firm and large load transmission service studies into a \nsingular 12-month process.”163 Transmission planning becomes more efficient the more future \ntransmission needs can be considered together in the planning process. This is one of the reasons \n \n160 Sw. Power Pool, Inc., 194 FERC ¶ 61,192, at 62,054, at P 2 (Mar. 13, 2026) (Rosner, \nComm’r, concurring). \n161 Id. at P 8. \n162 Id. at P 2. \n163 PJM Interconnection, L.L.C., Show Cause for Large Loads Framework, Co-Located Load \nOrder Workshop, at 6 (Sept. 30, 2026), available at https://www.pjm.com/-\n/media/DotCom/committees-groups/workshops/cllsco/2026/20260930/20260930-item-02---\nshow-cause-for-large-loads-approach---presentation.pdf."},{"page":44,"startToken":13364,"endToken":13613,"text":"44 \nFERC has required more comprehensive consideration of transmission needs in both \ntransmission and interconnection planning under Order Nos. 1000, 2023, and 1920.164 MISO \nignores that direction in proposing LARS. \nAfter MISO first presented its concept for aligning load and generation studies at the July \n16, 2026 LLWG meeting, stakeholders presented a consolidated planning process at MISO.165 \nAmong other things, the process would assign the costs of Network Upgrades would be allocated \nby contribution under the DPP’s existing cost-causation rules, rather than to load. The proposal \ndrew support across sectors, including from the Environmental Sector.166 \n167 \n \n164 See Order No. 1000, 136 FERC ¶ 61,051 (2011); Order No. 1920, 187 FERC ¶ 61,068 \n(2024); Order No. 2023, 184 FERC ¶ 61,054 (2023). \n165 Energy Futures Group, Generator and Load Interconnection Process (GALIP) at 7–12 (Aug. \n27, 2026), available at \nhttps://cdn.misoenergy.org/20260827%20LLWG%20Item%2013%20Generator%20Load%20Int\nerconnection%20Process%20(GALIP)%20Proposal_Energy%20Futures%20Group777224.pdf. \nEnergy Futures Group sought to present GALIP at the August 12, 2026 LLWG meeting, but \nMISO and the LLWG chair did not make time on that agenda; GALIP was heard in the final half \nhour of the six-hour August 27, 2026 LLWG meeting. \n166 Environmental Sector Feedback on LLWG-2026-6, MISO Stakeholder Feedback (Aug. 27, \n2026), available at https://www.misoenergy.org/engage/stakeholder-feedback/2026/llwg-large-\nload-addition-resource-study-llwg-2026-6-20260827. \n167 Energy Futures Group, Generation and Load Interconnection Process (GALIP): A Smarter \nApproach to Interconnection (Sept. 15, 2026), available at"},{"page":45,"startToken":13613,"endToken":13874,"text":"45 \nMISO’s disagreement with the GALIP proposal reveals its interconnection ethos: “MISO \noffers different interconnection products to meet different needs.”168 This is problematic for three \nreasons. First, meeting every new need with a new, siloed interconnection process (as MISO has \ndone with ERAS, the ZGIA, now LARS, and soon the LLPR) significantly increases network \nupgrade costs and the risk of MISO missing the combined system impacts of all of these parallel \nprocesses. Second, multiple interconnection paths increase the risk of bias and subjective \nassignment of preferential treatment, as discussed above. Third, interconnection studies are \nperformed in sequential order where each stage builds on the models, assumptions, and data of \nthe previous one. Parallel interconnection paths, particularly ones like LARS where the impact is \nnot constrained to a single point of interconnection, are inherently flawed. Since the physics of \nload and generation interconnection are inextricably tied, MISO’s approach of parallel studies \nwill fail to provide a complete view of transmission needs and system demands for LARS \nresources.  \nIV. \nConclusion \nFor the foregoing reasons, the Commission should reject all portions of MISO’s LARS \nproposal and direct MISO to engage with stakeholders to advance a different proposal.  \nAlternatively, Clean Energy Advocates and Community Organizations request that the \nCommission issue a deficiency letter directing MISO to address the issues in this protest. Either \ncourse of action should focus on an integration of planning processes that does not undermine \nthe DPP queue or shift costs to DPP customers. \nDated: October 23, 2026 \n \nhttps://energyfuturesgroup.com/2026/09/15/generation-and-load-interconnection-process-galip-\na-smarter-approach-to-interconnection/.  \n168 Drake Testimony at 44."},{"page":46,"startToken":13874,"endToken":13966,"text":"46 \nRespectfully submitted, \nSIERRA CLUB \n \n/s/ Justin Vickers \nJustin Vickers \nSenior Attorney, Sierra Club \n2101 Webster St., 13th Floor \nOakland, CA 94612 \n(224) 420-0614 \njustin.vickers@sierraclub.org \n \n/s/ Aaron Stemplewicz \nAaron Stemplewicz \nSameer Doshi \nSenior Attorney \nEarthjustice \n1617 John F. Kennedy Blvd., Ste. 2020 \nPhiladelphia, PA 19103 \n(917) 628-7411 \nastemplewicz@earthjustice.org \nsdoshi@earthjustice.org  \n \nCounsel for Sierra Club \n \nNATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL \n \n/s/ Anna Markowski \nAnna Markowski \nDirector, Midwest \nClimate and Clean Energy \nNatural Resources Defense Council  \n20 North Wacker Drive, Suite 1600  \nChicago, IL 60606  \n312-651-7927 \nAmarkowski@nrdc.org"},{"page":47,"startToken":13966,"endToken":14070,"text":"47 \nSUSTAINABLE FERC PROJECT \n \n/s/ Natalie McIntire \nNatalie McIntire \nSenior Advocate \nSustainable FERC Project \nNatural Resources Defense Council \n20 North Wacher Drive, Suite 1600 \nChicago, IL 60606 \n312-995-5907 \nnmcintire@nrdc.org \n \nCLEAN GRID ALLIANCE \n \n/s/ Beth Soholt \nBeth Soholt \nExecutive Director \nClean Grid Alliance \n3433 Broadway St NE, Suite 240 \nMinneapolis, MN 55413 \n651.644.3400 \nbsoholt@cleangridalliance.org \n \nCLEAN WISCONSIN \n \n/s/ Ciaran Gallagher \nCiaran Gallagher, Ph.D. \nEnergy & Air Manger \nClean Wisconsin \n634 W Main St #300 \n \nMadison, WI 53703 \ncgallagher@cleanwisconsin.org \n \nCOMMUNITY COLLABORATION ON CLIMATE CHANGE \n \n/s/ Kareem Scales \nCo-Chair \nCommunity Collaboration On Climate Change \nGrand Rapids, MI \nkareem@c4gr.org"},{"page":48,"startToken":14070,"endToken":14128,"text":"48 \nFRESH ENERGY \n \n/s/ Mike Schowalter \nMike Schowalter \nManaging Director, Transmission Policy \nFresh Energy \n81 Seventh St. E., Suite 200 \nSaint Paul, MN 55101 \n(612) 433-3648 \nschowalter@fresh-energy.org \n \nMICHIGAN ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE COALITION \n \n/s/ Wesley Watson \nWesley Watson \nPolicy Associate \nMichigan Environmental Justice Coalition \n1401 W. Fort St., P.O. Box 44080 \nDetroit, MI 48233 \nwesley@michiganej.org"},{"page":49,"startToken":14128,"endToken":14195,"text":"49 \nCERTIFICATE OF SERVICE \n \nI hereby certify that the foregoing has been served in accordance with 18 C.F.R. § \n385.2010 upon each party designated on the official service list in this proceeding, by email. \n \n            Dated: October 23, 2026. \n \n/s/ Justin Vickers \nJustin Vickers \nSenior Attorney, Sierra Club \n2101 Webster St., 13th Floor \nOakland, CA 94612 \n(224) 420-0614 \njustin.vickers@sierraclub.org \n \nCounsel for Sierra Club"}],"sections":[{"p":1,"at":0,"title":"Opening text","method":"opening text","endPage":2,"endAt":3,"startToken":0,"endToken":224},{"p":2,"at":3,"title":"TABLE OF CONTENTS","method":"printed heading","endPage":2,"endAt":2011,"startToken":224,"endToken":343},{"p":2,"at":2011,"title":"C. LARS is an unjustified departure from the Commission’s pro forma interconnection","method":"printed heading","endPage":2,"endAt":2195,"startToken":343,"endToken":367},{"p":2,"at":2195,"title":"D. MISO’s LARS proposal is not responsive to Commission direction regarding","method":"printed heading","endPage":3,"endAt":3,"startToken":367,"endToken":439},{"p":3,"at":3,"title":"I. Introduction","method":"printed heading","endPage":3,"endAt":7,"startToken":439,"endToken":440},{"p":3,"at":7,"title":"Introduction","method":"printed heading","endPage":3,"endAt":1164,"startToken":440,"endToken":602},{"p":3,"at":1164,"title":"II. Background","method":"printed heading","endPage":3,"endAt":1169,"startToken":602,"endToken":603},{"p":3,"at":1169,"title":"Background","method":"printed heading","endPage":3,"endAt":1181,"startToken":603,"endToken":604},{"p":3,"at":1181,"title":"A. Large Load Growth and Interconnection","method":"printed heading","endPage":4,"endAt":875,"startToken":604,"endToken":826},{"p":4,"at":875,"title":"B. The Show Cause Order","method":"printed heading","endPage":7,"endAt":964,"startToken":826,"endToken":1587},{"p":7,"at":964,"title":"C. The LARS Proposal","method":"printed heading","endPage":12,"endAt":134,"startToken":1587,"endToken":2980},{"p":12,"at":134,"title":"D. The Stakeholder Process","method":"printed heading","endPage":13,"endAt":4,"startToken":2980,"endToken":3223},{"p":13,"at":4,"title":"III. Arguments","method":"printed heading","endPage":13,"endAt":21,"startToken":3223,"endToken":3225},{"p":13,"at":21,"title":"A. LARS creates a cost shift from large loads and their generation to other","method":"printed heading","endPage":22,"endAt":1109,"startToken":3225,"endToken":6482},{"p":22,"at":1109,"title":"B. LARS violates open access principles and enables undue discrimination","method":"printed heading","endPage":33,"endAt":1045,"startToken":6482,"endToken":10013},{"p":33,"at":1045,"title":"C. LARS is an unjustified departure from the Commission’s pro forma","method":"printed heading","endPage":37,"endAt":761,"startToken":10013,"endToken":11268},{"p":37,"at":761,"title":"D. MISO’s LARS proposal is not responsive to Commission direction regarding","method":"printed heading","endPage":39,"endAt":400,"startToken":11268,"endToken":11843},{"p":39,"at":400,"title":"E. LARS threatens reliability and efficient planning","method":"printed heading","endPage":45,"endAt":1149,"startToken":11843,"endToken":13780},{"p":45,"at":1149,"title":"IV. Conclusion","method":"printed heading","endPage":45,"endAt":1154,"startToken":13780,"endToken":13781},{"p":45,"at":1154,"title":"Conclusion","method":"printed heading","endPage":49,"endAt":4,"startToken":13781,"endToken":14129},{"p":49,"at":4,"title":"CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE","method":"printed heading","endPage":49,"endAt":439,"startToken":14129,"endToken":14195}]}