Wisconsin’s Alliant Energy reports sufficient capacity to meet winter energy needs

Alliant Energy has reported that it has sufficient capacity to meet its natural gas and electric customers’ energy needs this winter, despite the storms and cold temperatures throughout the Midwest.

Alliant Energy is part of the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), the market system operator that monitors electric grid conditions to ensure capacity needs throughout the region. MISO coordinates energy from Louisiana to the Midwest and into Canada and oversees when additional capacity is needed for peak events. MISO also has partnerships with several Regional Transmission Organizations and can leverage or exchange power with them as needed. As part of MISO, Alliant Energy, based in Madison, Wisc., regularly communicates its supply capacity and projected customer demands with MISO.

“This partnership with MISO is extremely critical, especially during times of seasonal peak demand, such as the recent cold spell,” JP Brummond, vice president of customer and community engagement at Alliant Energy, said. “It helps us assure our customers we can safely and reliably deliver the affordable energy they count on. As we advance our Clean Energy Vision, we will continue to be guided by a balanced and purposeful transition to a diverse energy mix of generation resources.”

Alliant Energy leverages its Clean Energy Blueprint, which includes a portfolio of renewable resources like wind, solar, natural gas, and battery storage. This mix allows Alliant Energy to reliably deliver the energy its customers need every day.

“This approach allows us to spread out the risks and purposefully place utility scale solar projects and wind farms across Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota,” Matt Cole, director of operations at Alliant Energy, said. “This placement of resources disperses how and where energy is generated, which enhances the resiliency of our network.”

Further, Alliant Energy regularly performs preventative maintenance and repairs of generation resources as well as the gas and electric distribution systems. The company is also focused on its investments to advance the deployment of an advanced distribution management system, battery storage, a fiber optic network, and expand the use of smart energy systems and automated metering.