Mike Ross, senior vice president for external affairs at Southwest Power Pool, told the Kansas Senate Utilities Committee that SPP’s mission is "working together to responsibly and economically, keep the lights on today and in the future." He said SPP operates a regional wholesale market and plans high-voltage transmission, while state regulators and local utilities handle siting and construction.

The update, delivered to a committee that included Chairman (unnamed in the transcript) and several Kansas senators, emphasized three themes: the region’s rising reliance on wind and growing role for natural gas as a dispatchable resource; a large increase in transmission investment and an ongoing change in how the cost of new lines is allocated; and operational strain from a flood of interconnection requests tied to renewables and data centers.

Why it matters: Kansas is both a major producer of wind and a participant in SPP’s 14-state market. Changes in fuel mix and transmission planning affect retail rates, who pays for new lines and the state’s ability to export excess generation. SPP officials said those shifts also underpin proposals to raise planning reserve margins and to speed interconnection studies.

SPP’s role and membership
Mike Ross described SPP as an RTO that coordinates bulk electric operations across multiple states and does not build or site generation or transmission. "A good analogy is air traffic controllers," he said, explaining that SPP directs flows across infrastructure owned by members, which in Kansas include Evergy, Midwest Energy, Sunflower, municipal utilities, electric cooperatives and transmission owners such as ITC. Andrew French, commissioner at the Kansas Corporation Commission (KCC), was identified in the presentation as Kansas’s representative on SPP’s regional state committee.

Fuel mix and reliability
Ross gave figures for the SPP footprint’s fuel mix last year: roughly 38% wind, 28% natural gas, 24% coal, 5% nuclear, 3% hydro and minimal solar and storage. He said Kansas contributed heavily to regional wind: about 51% of generation produced in Kansas was wind. SPP’s data show Kansas exported energy 29% of the time and imported 11% of the time.

Ross and committee members discussed how variability in wind output increases demand for dispatchable resources. Ross noted a recent event in which wind output fell about 14,000 megawatts in four hours, an amount that would require bringing on about 28 large thermal units to compensate. He said that operational reality is a major reason natural gas generation has grown (gas generation in the region has risen roughly 62% since 2017, he said) and why many entities currently favor gas for accredited capacity: "you can build 100 megawatts of wind and you may get accredited at 20, or you can build 100 of gas and get accredited for 95."

Reserve margins and capacity accreditation
Ross described changes in planning reserve margins, which many load-serving entities must meet to ensure reliability: the system margin rose from about 12% to 15% and is scheduled to move to 16% next year for summer planning. He said the winter reserve margin starting in 2026 could reach 36% (Ross presented that figure in the meeting). Ross said SPP routinely studies accredited capacity (the historical effective output of a resource) rather than simply nameplate capacity.

Transmission investment and cost allocation
Ross reported that since 2006 about $15 billion in transmission upgrades have been constructed to connect generation in the SPP region, and that an additional $7.7 billion of transmission was built in the most recent year because of rapid peak-load growth. He said SPP’s regional state committee sets cost-allocation methodology for large lines: for 300 kV-and-above projects the region typically shares costs; 100–300 kV lines historically were paid two-thirds locally and one-third regionally, but the committee approved reallocation in some circumstances so benefits are shared more broadly.

Commissioner Andrew French (KCC) told senators that SPP identified four mid-size projects in the Sunflower area of Kansas that beneficiaries across the region were using; he said SPP and the Kansas regulator successfully sought FERC approval to change cost allocation for those projects so the region bears a larger share. French noted the change is on appeal in federal court and the KCC has intervened on behalf of Kansans.

Interconnection backlog and data centers
Ross told the committee SPP faces more interconnection requests than it can process quickly: he cited roughly 91,500 megawatts under study on a system with about a 50,000-megawatt peak. That backlog has driven SPP to pursue stakeholder-led reforms to fast-track studies in some cases. Ross said supply-chain lead times for new thermal generation (transformers, turbines, other parts) can still take several years; he described instances in which vendors declined to honor previously signed delivery contracts for generation because higher-paying buyers (for example, data centers) were willing to pay to take the capacity.

Expansion west and market services
Ross described SPP’s westward expansion and a market product called "markets-plus" intended to provide day-ahead and real-time market services to Western entities that want a slower path to full RTO membership. He said several Western states and utilities have joined or signaled interest, noting potential benefits from time-zone differences and additional market participants to spread costs. Ross said SPP’s members estimate about $3.62 billion in customer savings across the footprint in 2023 using the region’s market methodology.

Storage and solar
On batteries, Ross said four-hour battery systems can be dispatchable for that limited duration and are useful for shifting wind energy from low-demand nighttime hours into peak periods, but they are not a substitute for multi-day events: "If you're short on power, there's no power to recharge the battery." He reported solar was a very small share of current SPP generation (region-wide under 0.5%; Kansas about 0.1%), but that solar leads SPP’s future generation plan at roughly 35% of planned additions.

Regulatory and policy context
Ross repeatedly emphasized that SPP does not set state policy or finance projects: it studies and recommends and operates markets. He noted that FERC designates RTOs and approves tariffs, and that the SPP tariff and regional-state governance determine cost allocation, resource adequacy and other rules. He also referenced federal incentives such as the production tax credit as drivers of project economics.

Questions and next steps
Senators asked about cost exposure if the RTO expands west, about how taxes or state-specific fees might affect bids into the wholesale market, about the source of a noted increase in "thermal" (Ross clarified that the thermal increase referenced is natural gas), and whether the SPP planning assumptions will continue to raise reserve margins. Ross said SPP will continue to study reserve margins and that any change would be tied to reliability needs. He said SPP and state leaders, including Oklahoma’s governor, were working on speeding interconnection study timelines for projects that are stranded in queue.

Endnote: no formal committee action was taken during the presentation. The session moved on after Q&A and adjourned for the Senate floor schedule later the same day.