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

Applying a deliverable test, gas that is merchant, holds a signed interconnection agreement, and comes online by 2028, MISO's queue looks nearly empty. Out of 66.5 GW of gas in the interconnection queue, about 0.4 GW passes. That number is real, and it is also the wrong number to act on.

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. It is a market of vertically integrated, regulated utilities: Entergy, Ameren, Cleco, and their peers. In that structure a utility does not hold a speculative merchant queue position. It builds gas through an integrated resource plan approved by its regulator, and the project 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 queue that looks empty and the utility plan that leads the country are describing the same market from two different angles.

What this changes for the buyer

Hyperscaler energy leads. In MISO the firm-power counterparty is the regulated utility, not a merchant developer. That changes everything about the deal: the structure is a utility service agreement or a special contract, the timeline is 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 MISO than in ERCOT, because the incumbent utilities own 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. The scarce skill in MISO is not holding a queue slot. It is navigating the utility and the regulator to get a project into an approved resource plan. That is a different capability than winning a merchant queue race in ERCOT.

Methodology

The 0.4 GW deliverable 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.