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On May 19, 2022, FERC staff released its 2022 Summer Energy Market and Reliability Assessment (“Summer Assessment”). The Summer Assessment forecasts “higher than average” temperatures for the summer, which are expected to have a significant impact on demand for electricity, amid a continuation of extreme drought conditions in the West, and coming on the heels of the retirement of thousands of megawatts of baseload conventional resources.

On April 29, 2022, the FERC rejected Midcontinent Independent System Operator Inc.’s (“MISO”) proposed tariff revisions that sought to “extend” MISO Transmission Owners’ option to self-fund transmission upgrades so as to apply to Necessary Upgrades to support the connection of Merchant High Voltage Direct Current (“MHVDC”) transmission into MISO. FERC found that MISO failed to show its proposal was just and reasonable because MISO argued that Network Upgrades and Necessary Upgrades were functionally identical yet only proposed to extend the self-funding option traditionally applied to Network Upgrades without also extending other funding options and protections for customers.

On April 22, 2022, the Commission on remand from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (“D.C. Circuit”), reversed its approval of the California Independent System Operator Corporation’s (“CAISO”) proposed Capacity Market Adder (“20% adder”). The Commission ordered CAISO to submit a compliance filing that removes the 20% adder from its Open Access Transmission Tariff (“OATT”) and replace it with an alternative methodology that excludes the 20% adder.

On April 5, 2022, FERC approved PJM Interconnection, L.L.C.’s (“PJM”) proposed revisions to the Consolidated Transmission Owners Agreement (“CTOA”) aimed at improving effectiveness and efficiency in decision-making among the 18 transmission owners currently eligible to vote on PJM business. Despite a protest arguing that the proposal would disenfranchise non-traditional transmission owners, FERC found that the proposed revisions “rebalance the CTOA voting rules to better align with individual PJM Transmission Owners’ economic stakes in the transmission system.”

On February 22, 2022, FERC issued a Supplemental Notice regarding its planned Technical Conference on its Notice of Inquiry on Financial Assurance Measures for licenses, scheduled to take place on Tuesday, April 26 at 11:30am.

The Supplemental Notice provides a schedule for the program and proposed panel topics.  The first…

On March 24, 2022, FERC issued an order granting a motion to extend the deadline for submitting the cost justification filings required for spot market sales in the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (“WECC”) region that exceed FERC’s $1,000/MWh energy price cap.  Sellers will now have 30 days after the end of the month in which any such sales occurred rather than seven days.

On March 24, 2022, FERC denied a petition filed by Irradiant Partners, LP (“Irradiant” or “Petitioner”) seeking waiver of the Commission’s Qualifying Facility (“QF”) filing requirement for its acquisition and recertification of 185 QFs. The Commission held that the recertification requirement—even at this scale—was not unduly burdensome, citing mitigating factors and emphasizing the particular importance of having up-to-date ownership information to assist FERC in monitoring for discrimination.