On March 2, 2011, PPL EnergyPlus, LLC (“PPL EnergyPlus”) filed a complaint at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC” or the “Commission”) alleging that PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. (“PJM”) failed to conduct its annual financial transmission rights (“FTR”) auctions and auction revenue rights (“ARR”) allocations according to the PJM Open Access Transmission Tariff (“OATT”).  PPL EnergyPlus stated that PJM failed to include all outages expected to last two months or more in its simultaneous feasibility tests conducted for FTR auctions and ARR allocations, and according to PPL EnergyPlus, the OATT clearly requires inclusion of outages lasting two months or more.  PPL EnergyPlus believes PJM is “all-but ensuring revenue inadequacy” by not including these outages because failure to include the outages is creating excessive ARR and FTR revenue shortages.

PJM stated that the company has lost more than $13 million due to excessive ARR awards that did not include outages.  PPL EnergyPlus is seeking to be made whole due to the losses; however, PPL EnergyPlus did not specially ask for remuneration.  Instead, PPL EnergyPlus said the mechanism by which it should be made whole can be deferred to another ruling.  The next annual FTR auction is scheduled to begin April 5, 2011, and PJM has announced that there is no intention to model two outages that are expected to last at least two months in the upcoming FTR auction.  PPL EnergyPlus is seeking fast track processing that would allow an order to be issued by the Commission before March 31, 2011.

A full copy of the complaint is available here.