Midwest Reliability Organization warns demand growth could outpace resources; data centers a major driver

Midwest Reliability Organization officials told the House Energy Finance and Policy Committee on March 5 that their 2026 regional risk assessment identifies energy adequacy — whether supply can meet rapidly growing demand — as the region’s single extreme risk.

"For the third consecutive year, we have identified the top and only extreme risk within our region to be whether we can supply enough energy to meet rapidly growing demand," Mark T. Meyer, MRO’s director of power system risk management, told lawmakers. Meyer said a major driver of that risk is rapid data-center growth supporting artificial intelligence and the broader digital economy, while dispatchable generation is retiring and renewable resources require different modeling and controls.

Will Soiford, director of regulatory affairs at MRO, described the organization’s role enforcing NERC reliability standards under FERC authority and said MRO oversees about 250 registered entities and serves roughly 27 million customers in its footprint. MRO highlighted findings from its Long-Term Reliability Assessment: RTO-provided modeling shows projected summer peak demand growth of roughly 224 gigawatts over the next 10 years, a sharp increase over prior outlooks, and identified a gap between approved generation additions and forecast demand.

MRO officials cited two 2025 localized events in the southern portion of their footprint that required controlled load shed as examples of how tight conditions have become. They said winter remains the more challenging season because of fuel constraints and retirements that have increased reliance on natural gas generation, and they noted a new high-priority risk: the availability of critical electrical equipment and materials with historically long lead times.

MRO recommended extending planning horizons, pacing generation retirements to replacement capacity, strengthening fuel-assurance arrangements, and improving equipment supply resilience. On modeling, Meyer said MRO has begun using all-hours energy-adequacy metrics and Monte Carlo approaches that account for periods of low wind or solar and that batteries — typically four-hour discharge systems — may not close multi-day energy droughts.

Committee members asked about transmission resilience, behind-the-meter generation, battery storage, and whether MRO sets recommendations for allowable new load sizes in communities; MRO said load-sizing decisions are local and that its assessments are intended as a resource to inform policymakers rather than prescriptive rules.

MRO urged decision-makers to weigh the tradeoffs between reliability, affordability and sustainability as they plan for infrastructure and policy adjustments.

MRO said its latest LTRA and RRA documents are available to inform further policymaking and planning work.