MISO Breaks Ground On Regional Operations Center
by March 14, 2014 10:47 am 125 views
Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), a regional transmission organization that is now Entergy Arkansas’ new home for transmission coordination, broke ground today on a regional operations center in west Little Rock.
The facility will open in the spring of 2015 and will serve as the command center for MISO’s newly established South region.
The company expects to hire 50 new white-collar jobs averaging about $85,000 a year in salary. MISO expects to hire employees with various backgrounds for positions, including real-time operations, market operations, customer services, government and regulatory affairs, information technology, and administrative support.
The regional operations center is a $22 million investment for MISO.
MISO serves customers in 15 states and parts of Canada and conducts nearly $20 billion in annual gross market energy transactions. The Carmel, Indiana-based non-profit was approved as the nation’s first regional transmission organization in 2001.
The move accommodates MISO’s expanded footprint as it integrates the four-state Entergy operating companies along with several area transmission owners and generators into the MISO system.
Entergy Arkansas, which aligned with MISO to coordinate its transmission needs, projects savings of $263 million to its customers over the first 10 years of MISO membership.
In December 2013, Entergy made the transition to MISO’s Day 2 transmission coordination system.