Juan Dawson

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On July 19, 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (“D.C. Circuit”) issued an Order denying Tenaska Clear Creek Wind, LLC’s (“Clear Creek”) challenges to FERC’s orders allowing the allocation of costs for network upgrades.  Southwest Power Pool, Inc. (“SPP”) assigned costs of more than $100 million to Clear Creek to pay for upgrades required on SPP’s system to accommodate the interconnection of Clear Creek’s wind turbine-powered electrical generation project (the “Project”).Continue Reading D.C. Circuit Finds That Interconnection Customers are Responsible for Network Upgrade Costs

On June 14, 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (“D.C. Circuit”) denied Food & Water Watch’s environmental challenges to the FERC’s order granting a certificate of public convenience and necessity (“CPCN”) to Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company (“Tennessee Gas”) for its East 300 Upgrade Project (“Project”).Continue Reading D.C. Circuit Denies Food & Water Watch’s Challenges to FERC’s GHG Review in NGA Certificate Proceeding

On May 23, 2024, FERC issued an Order denying Lackawanna Energy Center LLC’s (“Lackawanna”) complaint against PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. (“PJM”) alleging that PJM failed to reimburse Lackawanna for lost opportunity costs (“LOC”) incurred following allegedly improper curtailment orders from PJM during a 2023 transmission line outage.  Lackawanna argued that PJM’s curtailment of its generation output violated the Federal Power Act and the PJM Tariff, which typically allow for LOC payments when generator output is reduced due to transmission constraints or reliability issues.  FERC dismissed all claims raised in the complaint.Continue Reading FERC Dismisses Lackawanna Complaint Against PJM Seeking “Stability Limit”-Related Lost Opportunity Costs

On March 28, 2024, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, Inc. (“MISO”) submitted a filing to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) proposing revisions to its Open Access Transmission, Energy and Operating Reserve Markets Tariff (“Tariff”) to implement a direct loss of load (“DLOL”) based accreditation methodology.  The DLOL methodology will be used to accredit resources for MISO’s annual Planning Resource Auction and to determine a load serving entity’s resource adequacy for each season during the applicable year.  According to MISO, the proposal will better account for how different resources bolster grid reliability during stress periods.  MISO requests that the tariff revisions take effect on September 1, 2024.Continue Reading MISO Seeks to Reform Resource Accreditation Requirements

On March 21, 2024, FERC issued a Notice of Inquiry (“NOI”) seeking additional information on whether the Commission should continue to allow interstate pipelines to package “high value” capacity with non-contiguous and operationally unrelated parcels of capacity in a single auction or open season, thus requiring interested bidders to bid on both segments of capacity.  Initial comments on the NOI are due by June 20, 2024.Continue Reading FERC Initiates Inquiry into Capacity Allocation on Non-Contiguous Pipeline Segments

Executive Summary

On March 21, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC or the Commission) issued Order No. 2023-A (Final Rule), which reaffirmed aspects of Order No. 2023 — the Commission’s landmark order updating its generator interconnection procedures. As detailed further in this summary, the Commission largely upheld Order No. 2023, including some of the more controversial aspects of the order, such as penalties and the transmission capacity “heat map,” and provided further clarity on other aspects.Continue Reading Troutman Pepper Summary of FERC Order No. 2023-A on Generator Interconnections

On February 15, 2024, FERC approved two new extreme cold weather Reliability Standards EOP-011-4 (Emergency Operations) and TOP-002-5 (Operations Planning).

This approval is the culmination of a joint inquiry and November 2021 report (“Report”) among FERC, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (“NERC”), and regional entity staff into a February 2021 cold weather reliability event that affected Texas and the South-Central United States, which was the largest controlled firm load shed event in U.S. history.  The Report recommended reliability standard enhancements to improve extreme cold weather operations, preparedness, and coordination.Continue Reading FERC Approves Extreme Cold Weather Reliability Standards EOP-011-4 and TOP-002-5

On December 19, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (“Sixth Circuit”), in Electric Power Supply Association; PJM Power Providers Group v. FERC, held that the former Chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”), Richard Glick, exceeded his authority when he reinstated market design features including a stepped demand curve and an $850/MWh price ceiling for the PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. (“PJM”) Reserve Market, without the backing of his colleagues.  This ruling was made by a split Sixth Circuit.  In addition, on February 7, the Sixth Circuit denied Petitioners’ request for panel rehearing of the opinion.Continue Reading Sixth Circuit Finds that FERC Overstepped its Authority on Voluntary Remand of PJM Reserve Market Design Changes

On November 27, 2023, Troutman Pepper’s award-winning Energy Group published a white paper titled, Unlocking U.S. Transmission Upgrades – Are We On the Cusp of Real Progress?  The white paper offers perspectives from a range of transmission experts and examines the latest regulatory and legal changes that could lead to much-needed upgrades to the U.S. transmission grid.  Specifically, the report discusses why transmission grid upgrades are needed, identifies four main obstacles to upgrading the transmission system, provides solutions and benefits to overcoming these obstacles, and concludes with reasons for optimism for the future of the U.S. transmission system.Continue Reading Troutman Pepper Releases White Paper on Transmission Upgrades