Adrienne Thompson

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On November 26, 2019, FERC rejected, without prejudice, various filings from Basin Electric Power Cooperative (“Basin”) to establish FERC-jurisdictional rates, terms, and conditions of wholesale power and transmission service ahead of certain anticipated changes among Basin’s member cooperatives that would trigger FERC jurisdiction. FERC generally rejected the filings as “patently” deficient.

On November 14, 2019, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources (“Committee”) held a hearing to consider the nomination of Dan Brouillette as Secretary of Energy. Mr. Brouillette is currently DOE’s Deputy Secretary, and has been nominated by President Trump to replace outgoing Secretary Rick Perry.

On November 1, 2019 FERC approved a Stipulation and Consent Agreement between its Office of Enforcement (“OE”), the regional reliability entity Texas Reliability Entity, Inc. (“Texas RE”), the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (“NERC”), and Calpine Corporation (“Calpine”), related to Calpine’s alleged violations of NERC reliability standards governing maintenance and testing of batteries and other protection systems, as well as provisions of the California Independent System Operator Corporation (“CAISO”) Tariff requiring entities to report planned and unplanned generator outages. As part of the settlement, Calpine neither admitted nor denied the alleged violations, but agreed to pay civil penalties of $375,000 to Texas RE and $25,000 to the United States Treasury, and to undergo compliance monitoring.

On October 24, 2019, FERC denied Harbor Cogeneration Company, LLC’s (“Harbor”) complaint alleging that Southern California Edison Company (“SoCal Edison”) misclassified certain interconnection facilities contrary to FERC’s Order No. 2003 and violated SoCal Edison’s Transmission Owner Tariff (“TO Tariff”) in directly assigning the facility costs to Harbor without FERC “approval.” FERC denied the complaint and rejected Harbor’s request for refunds, reasoning that the charges constituted valid filed rates notwithstanding that FERC did not use the word “approve” in its delegated letter orders, and that, therefore, the charges were lawfully imposed regardless of any alleged conflicts with FERC interconnection pricing policies.

On October 17, 2019, FERC directed PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. (“PJM”) and other interested parties to provide information with respect to how uplift costs—i.e., the costs associated with make-whole payments provided by Regional Transmission Organizations (“RTOs”) and Independent System Operators (“ISOs”) to market participants whose commitment and dispatch resulted in a shortfall between the generator’s offer and the revenue earned through market-clearing prices—should be allocated to virtual transactions in PJM, and in particular to Up-to-Congestion (“UTC”) transactions. FERC’s order seeks to update the record in an ongoing Federal Power Act Section 206 investigation into PJM’s UTC and uplift practices that FERC initiated in 2014.

On October 4, 2019, FERC staff issued a report for users, operators, and owners of the bulk-power system to increase compliance with mandatory Critical Infrastructure Protection (“CIP”) standards and improve cybersecurity for the nation’s electric grid. In the report, FERC staff recommended, among other things, that entities:

  1. verify employees’ recurring authorizations for using removable media;
  2. ensure all employees and third-party contractors complete required trainings and properly maintain training records;
  3. consider all generation assets when categorizing bulk electric system cyber systems associated with transmission facilities; and
  4. review all firewalls to ensure there are no obsolete or overly permissive firewall access control rules in use.

On September 27, 2019, FERC approved CAISO tariff revisions to its voluntary Capacity Procurement Mechanism (“CPM”) and mandatory Reliability-Must-Run (“RMR”) framework such that all backstop procurement from resources that would otherwise retire or mothball will be addressed through CAISO’s RMR provisions. While FERC has traditionally considered RMR contracts as measures of last resort, FERC found it just and reasonable for CAISO to expand its use of such contracts to address evolving operational needs due, in part, to the increased penetration of variable energy resources in California. Commissioner Glick partially dissented, arguing that the approved tariff changes essentially provide CAISO “unchecked authority” to enter into out-of-market contracts to meet its resource adequacy needs.

Summary of NOPR

On September 19, 2019, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) proposing to revise its regulations implementing Sections 201 and 210 of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (PURPA) in light of changes in the energy industry since 1978.[1]

On July 18, 2019, FERC affirmed on remand its prior approval of Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s (“PG&E”) request for a return-on-equity (“ROE”) incentive adder to its transmission rates (“RTO-Participation Incentive”) for its ongoing membership in the California Independent System Operator Corporation (“CAISO”).  In its decision, which followed from a 2018 remand from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (“Ninth Circuit”), FERC reasserted its jurisdiction over such transmission incentive questions and determined that, absent a relevant mandate under California law requiring PG&E’s participation in CAISO, the RTO-Participation Incentive was warranted because it induces PG&E to continue its CAISO membership.

On July 18, 2019, FERC issued Order No. 861, modifying its regulations regarding the horizontal market power analysis required to obtain authorization to sell energy, capacity, or ancillary services at market-based rates.  FERC adopted its proposal (see December 20, 2018 edition of the WER) to relieve electric power sellers of the obligation to submit indicative screens to obtain or retain market-based rate authority in any Regional Transmission Organization (“RTO”)/Independent System Operator (“ISO”) market with FERC-approved RTO/ISO monitoring and mitigation.  Market-based rate sellers (“MBR Sellers”) must continue to submit indicative screens for authorization to make capacity sales in any RTO/ISO that lacks an RTO/ISO-administered capacity market subject to FERC-approved monitoring and mitigation—currently, the California Independent System Operator (“CAISO”) and Southwest Power Pool (“SPP”).  FERC stated its intent for the rule is to ease regulatory burdens on MBR Sellers while simultaneously preserving its authority to prevent the exercise of market power.