In MISO, the Firm Gas Is in the Utility Plan, Not the Queue

Run the ERCOT-style filter on MISO and the gas queue looks nearly empty. The filter is right, but MISO is the wrong market for it.

The queue is the wrong lens in a regulated market

ERCOT is an energy-only, merchant market, so developers commit through the interconnection queue and the queue is a genuine supply signal. MISO is not that. Much of MISO, especially MISO South, is served by vertically integrated, regulated utilities: Entergy, Ameren, Cleco, and their peers. In those utility territories, new firm generation is often developed through utility resource planning rather than a merchant queue position. The gas is built into an integrated resource plan approved by the regulator, and shows up as committed only late in the process.

So the merchant-queue filter that works in ERCOT structurally misses the gas in MISO. To find it, look at what is actually being built.

What is actually being built

EIA's generator inventory shows about 15 GW of planned gas across the MISO footprint, the most of any organized market in the country. And it is concentrated: Louisiana alone leads every state in the nation at roughly 6.8 GW of planned gas, much of it Entergy capacity tied to serving new large-load and data-center demand in the state. The near-empty queue and the country-leading utility build describe the same market from two different angles.

What this changes for the buyer

Hyperscaler energy leads. In vertically integrated MISO territories, especially MISO South, the firm-power counterparty is often the regulated utility rather than a merchant developer. That changes the deal: the structure is a utility service agreement or a special contract, the timeline runs on the utility's resource plan and its regulatory approvals, and the price is set inside a regulated framework rather than a bilateral merchant negotiation. The upside is that a utility can commit real, firm, rate-based capacity. Louisiana and the broader Entergy South footprint is where that is happening now.

Infra funds. A merchant gas platform has far less room to run in these MISO territories than in ERCOT, because there the regulated utilities, not merchant developers, drive the build. The investable angle is more likely alongside or around the regulated build (land, adjacent infrastructure, storage) than a pure merchant gas position.

Developers. In those utility territories, the scarce skill is working the utility and regulatory process to get a project into an approved resource plan, rather than simply holding a merchant queue position. That is a different capability than winning a merchant queue race in ERCOT.

Methodology

The 0.4 GW screened figure is derived from MISO's public generator interconnection queue (the JSON feed behind the GI interactive queue), reconciled against that source: gas projects with an executed interconnection agreement, an in-service date of 2026 to 2028, and not already operating. It is Tafel Power's filtered estimate, not a MISO-published category, and MISO marks agreement-stage projects as complete rather than active, which the filter accounts for. Planned-gas figures are from EIA-860M (the federal monthly generator inventory), grouped by balancing authority and by state. Figures reflect mid-2026 snapshots and may have changed since.

All data compiled by Tafel Power from public sources. Framing informed by the firm's transaction advisory work in ERCOT and cross-ISO markets.