Saint Paul, Minn. Midwest Reliability Organization (MRO) is pleased to provide the draft 2025 Business Plan and Budget for industry review and comment. The draft budget of $26.7 million reflects an overall increase of 7.5 percent from the 2024 budget and supports the ERO Enterprise vision of a highly reliable and secure North American bulk power system. In developing the budget, MRO’s leadership team focused on prioritizing investments around MRO’s Strategic Plan fundamentals of people, processes and partnerships and the following three-year strategic priorities:
- Ensure that MRO remains an innovative, resilient, and high-performing organization with an increased emphasis on leadership development and culture.
- Drive operational excellence throughout MRO in all processes and procedures, while emphasizing effectiveness and efficiency.
- Develop a nimble, adaptive, and collaborative culture that allows MRO to carry out its mission as a trusted and valued member of the ERO Enterprise.
The 2025 budget increase is driven by investment in three additional full-time equivalent (FTE) positions that will support initiatives to transition from capacity-based resource adequacy assessments to energy deliverability assessments, and enhance external engagement efforts. Other costs impacting the budget include implementing the results of a compensation study that supports MRO’s goal to attract new talent and retain a high caliber workforce.
Regarding the assessment charged to load-serving entities, the draft 2025 budget proposes a 7 percent increase over 2024 (from $23.6 million to $25.2 million). An adjustment of $1.5 million from MRO’s reserves will be used to stabilize assessments and offset the increase.
The draft 2025 Business Plan and Budget is available for review on MRO’s website. Comments and questions should be directed to MRO’s Vice President and Engineer for Strategy, Innovation and Finance Lam Chung no later than June 5, 2024.
Following the comment period, the draft 2025 Business Plan and Budget will be presented to the MRO Board of Directors for approval on June 20, 2024. Following board approval, the budget is presented to the NERC Board of Trustees for approval and then filed with FERC. FERC typically issues an order approving the business plans and budgets of NERC and the six Regional Entities in the October/November timeframe.
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Midwest Reliability Organization (MRO) is a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring the reliability and security of the bulk power system in the central region of North America, including parts of both the United States and Canada. MRO is one of six regional entities in North America operating under authority from regulators in the United States through a delegation agreement with the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and in Canada under similar arrangements. The primary focus of MRO is developing and ensuring compliance with reliability standards and assessing the grid’s ability to meet the demands for electricity.