Every milestone payment in an interconnection queue increases the financial weight of each upgrade assigned to your project. As cycles progress and earlier milestones become sunk costs, the question gets sharper: are the next deposits backed by upgrade assignments that actually reflect the most cost-effective option? Nira Energy’s Custom Upgrades is built for that question.

When a decision point window opens, the time to test alternatives and propose mitigations is narrow. Developed in direct response to customer requests for a faster, more rigorous workflow, Custom Upgrades lets transmission teams test their own alternative network upgrades at scale, against ISO-accurate models.

Capabilities include:

• Alternative mitigation upload and auto-validation
  Upload an IDV or INCH file representing a model change, proposed mitigation or transmission topology update. Nira auto-validates it against the latest ISO models, with revalidation as new models are released.

• Scenario integration
  Roll alternative mitigations into Nira's scenario modeling alongside drop-offs, queue dynamics, and competing projects. See cost and performance impact in full queue context.

• ISO-grade methodology
  Runs on the same tools that have produced >97% accuracy across 700+ GW of projects modeled in Nira. Proposed mitigations are validated with the same rigor the ISO uses.

Day-one use cases include testing higher-queued network upgrades in scenarios, modeling RTEP / MTEP upgrades before they're baked into ISO models, and testing upgrade reversal scenarios — useful for any backbone drop-off analysis.

Why It Matters

Most developers today either accept ISO-assigned upgrades at face value, or stitch together partial alternative mitigation analysis across internal modeling tools, IDV files, and transmission team capacity — often during the same three weeks between phase results and decision point.

Prior to making milestone commitments, developers should understand:

• The specific network upgrades driving their exposure

• Which assigned upgrades may be candidates for alternative mitigation

• How alternative mitigations perform when validated against ISO methodology

• How those mitigations affect cost and project economics in full queue context

Customers interested in Custom Upgrades in MISO can schedule a demo to be among the first to evaluate their alternative mitigations in time for upcoming decision point windows.

Interested in learning more? Schedule a demo to walk through your team's current alternative mitigation workflow — and see what Custom Upgrades will make possible.