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On November 17, 2016, FERC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NOPR”) in which it proposed modifications to its pro forma interconnection agreements that would require new generating facilities to install and enable primary frequency response equipment as a condition of interconnection. FERC explained that the proposed modifications are intended to address industry-wide reliability concerns related to declining frequency response performance.

On October 11, 2016, FERC issued an order on the refund liability of Midwest Generation, LLC (“Midwest”) for violating FERC-approved settlement agreement terms regarding reactive supply and voltage control service. Of note, although FERC approved Midwest’s total refund obligation calculation of over $3.6 million, it declined to exercise its primary jurisdiction over whether Midwest should be responsible to pay the portion of this obligation that accrued before the utility’s debts were discharged in an April 2014 bankruptcy proceeding. Instead, FERC directed Midwest to pay the refund amounts that accrued following the bankruptcy proceeding, which totaled around $1.7 million.

On June 16, 2016, FERC amended its regulations to require that the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (“NERC”) provide FERC Commissioners and staff with access, on a non-public and ongoing basis, to NERC’s Transmission Availability Data System (“TADS”), the Generating Availability Data System (“GADS”), and the protection system misoperations database. While FERC explained that such access would “provide the Commission with information necessary to determine the need for new or modified Reliability Standards and to better understand NERC’s periodic reliability and adequacy assessments,” it also added that “the Commission is not precluded from using the accessed data for other statutory purposes.”