On April 16, 2026, FERC issued a civil penalty assessment order, directing American Efficient and affiliated companies (together, American Efficient or Company) to pay $1.1 billion in disgorgement and civil penalties for what FERC called “one of the largest and most brazen frauds in the history of the [] Commission.”…

On April 16, 2026, FERC accepted in part and rejected in part PJM Interconnection, L.L.C.’s (PJM) compliance filing proposing changes to PJM’s Open Access Transmission Tariff (Tariff). FERC accepted PJM’s clarification of procedures for using new generating facilities to serve Co-Located Load but rejected revisions to the definition of “Co-Located Load” and PJM’s incorporation of such definition in specific Tariff sections. FERC ordered PJM to submit a further compliance filing by May 18, 2026.

On April 16, 2026, FERC announced that it will move forward with reforms to govern how large loads interconnect to the interstate transmission system, committing to take action in its pending rulemaking in Docket No. RM26‑4‑000 by the end of June 2026. In its order, FERC stated that it will address the rapid growth of large loads, including data centers, by establishing a framework to ensure that such loads can connect to the transmission system in a timely, orderly, and non‑discriminatory manner, and that it intends to do so in a way that is “quick, efficient, and legally durable.”

Host Vaughn Morrison sits down with Darin Green of Array Technologies to explore how “engineered simplicity” in solar trackers is reshaping the economics of utility‑scale solar and storage. They discuss how smarter tracking hardware and controls can make repowering older projects faster and more cost‑effective, the growing trend of pairing batteries with solar in the repowering context, and what developers should know about domestic content, FEOC, and IRA incentives as they plan their next generation of projects.

On March 19, 2026, FERC issued Order No. 919, which approved eleven proposed Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Reliability Standards, four new definitions, and eighteen proposed revised definitions to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (NERC) Glossary of Terms Used in Reliability Standards (NERC Glossary). FERC asserted that the new and revised definitions and new CIP Reliability Standards will support entities’ adoption of virtualization, which will improve the reliability of the Bulk-Power System against cyber security threats. NERC’s revisions will become effective the first day of the first calendar quarter that is 24 months after Order No. 919’s May 26, 2026, effective date, or April 1, 2028.

On March 19, 2026, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) granted Golden Triangle Storage, LLC (“Golden Triangle”) a certificate of public convenience and necessity under section 7(c) of the Natural Gas Act for its Spindletop Expansion Project (“Spindletop” or “Project”) in Jefferson County, Texas, subject to detailed engineering and environmental conditions.  In the same order, FERC reaffirmed Golden Triangle’s authority to charge market-based rates for storage and hub services and granted associated waivers of cost-based accounting and reporting requirements.

On March 30, 2026, FERC accepted to ISO New England Inc.’s (ISO-NE) Transmission, Markets and Services Tariff (Tariff) that primarily replaces the existing Forward Capacity Market (FCM) with a prompt capacity market in which an Annual Capacity Auction (ACA) would be held approximately one month before the applicable period for…

On March 19, 2026, in Opinion No. 594, FERC issued a long-awaited decision in litigation about the base Return on Equity (ROE) to be earned by the New England Transmission Owners (NETOs). Previous iterations of the Commission had failed to address the 2017 remand from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (D.C. Circuit) in Emera Maine v. FERC. FERC set the NETOs’ ROE at 9.57%. In addition to applying that new ROE going forward, FERC backdated the new rate to October 16, 2014, and ordered the NETOs to issue refunds with interest to implement that directive. FERC separately required refunds for the 15-month refund period from October 1, 2011, through December 31, 2012. FERC’s authority to backdate new rates under section 206 has been challenged in other cases recently.

On March 19, 2026, FERC approved Southwest Power Pool, Inc.’s (SPP) System Support Resource (SSR) program to allow SPP, under specified conditions, to keep certain generating units that plan to retire temporarily online when they are needed to maintain reliability of the bulk electric system in the SPP region.  In doing so, FERC found that SPP’s proposal appropriately balanced the need to maintain reliability with generator owners’ ability to implement their business plans.

On March 19, 2026, FERC approved Southwest Power Pool, Inc.’s (SPP) proposal to establish a Consolidated Planning Process (CPP) framework to streamline its regional transmission planning and generator interconnection process. FERC determined that SPP’s CPP framework complies with the regional transmission planning and cost allocation requirements of Order Nos. 890 and 1000, as well as the generator interconnection rules of Order Nos. 2003 and 2023. FERC accepted SPP’s proposed tariff revisions to implement CPP effective March 1, 2026, and directed SPP to submit a compliance filing making certain limited changes to the tariff revisions.