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On September 4, 2015, the Northwest Power Pool (“NWPP”) members’ Market Assessment and Coordination Committee (“MC”) submitted a petition for declaratory order, requesting FERC make determinations with respect to four categories of issues associated with the development of the NWPP’s Centrally Cleared Energy Dispatch Market (“CCED Market”). The CCED Market would provide a platform for voluntary 15-minute trading at a single-market clearing price.

On September 17, 2015, the Commission issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NOPR”) in which it proposed to amend its regulations to require the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (“NERC”) to provide the Commission and Commission staff with on-going, non-public access to three NERC databases: (i) the Transmission Availability Data System (“TADS”) database; (ii) the Generating Availability Data System (“GADS”) database; and (iii) the protection system misoperations database.  According to the Commission, the proposal is intended to 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.”

On September 17, 2015, the Commission issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NOPR”) to address two existing practices that FERC believes result in distorted price signals.  The NOPR proposes to address this problem by: (1) requiring that each organized market align settlement and dispatch intervals by settling real-time energy and operating reserves transactions financially at the same time interval that it dispatches energy and prices operating reserves; and (2) requiring that each organized market trigger shortage pricing for any dispatch interval during which a shortage of energy or operating reserves occurs.

On September 4, 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (“Ninth Circuit”) remanded a pair of FERC decisions that partially approved two settlement agreements between Idaho Power, its holding company IDACORP (together, “IDACORP”), and the Cities of Tacoma and Seattle, respectively. These settlement agreements arose out of one of the many FERC proceedings stemming from the California Energy Crisis. When FERC partially rejected the settlement agreements, IDACORP petitioned the Ninth Circuit for review, arguing that FERC failed to follow its own precedent and regulations in partially rejecting the agreements. The Ninth Circuit agreed, remanded the proceeding to FERC, and mandated that it issue a decision within sixty days.

On September 1, 2015, the Commission granted Northeast Energy Associates’ (“NEA”) request for a one-time waiver of the timing requirements of section III.13.1.1.2.1 of ISO New England Inc.’s (“ISO-NE”) Transmission, Markets and Services Tariff (“Tariff”).  The waiver allows consideration of NEA’s New Capacity Show of Interest Form (“Show of Interest Form”) for a 25 MW incremental increase of capacity at NEA’s Bellingham Energy Center (“Bellingham”), even though NEA submitted the requisite interconnection deposit the morning after the deadline set forth in the rules governing ISO-NE’s Forward Capacity Market (“FCM”).

On September 1, 2015, FERC announced that Chairman Norman Bay had named Max Minzner as general counsel to the Commission.  Prior to being named general counsel, Mr. Minzner served as a staff advisor to Chairman Bay.  Prior to joining FERC, Mr. Minzner was a professor at the University of New Mexico School Of Law and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.  Mr. Minzner is a graduate of Brown University and Yale Law School.

On July 22, 2015, the Commission determined that demand response and energy efficiency resources should be able to participate in two PJM Interconnection LLC (“PJM”) transition auctions created to implement a new capacity product called Capacity Performance Resources.  The Commission found that, while PJM had correctly interpreted the relevant provisions of its Open Access Transmission Tariff (“OATT”) as not allowing non-generation resources like demand response and energy efficiency to participate in the transition auctions, such exclusion was nonetheless unjust, unreasonable, and unduly discriminatory.  The Commission ordered PJM to submit revisions to its OATT, and a revised timeline for both transition auctions, within 15 days of the date of the order.

On July 27, 2015, FERC released its 2015 version of the Energy Primer: A Handbook of Energy Market Basics (“Energy Primer”).  The Energy Primer was developed by staff from the Division of Energy Market Oversight within FERC’s Office of Enforcement.  First released in 2012, the Energy Primer is a manual that provides a broad overview of the physical wholesale markets for natural gas and electricity and energy-related financial markets.  The 2015 release of the Energy Primer provides an update of the changes in the energy industry since its 2012 release.

On July 28, 2012, FERC’s Office of Energy Projects (“OEP”) released a 32-page manual titled “Suggested Best Practices for Industry Outreach Programs to Stakeholders” (“Manual”).  In doing so, OEP states that the purpose of the Manual is to identify best practices for natural gas project developers to “effectively engage stakeholders in the application process for siting, construction and operation of interstate natural gas facilities and LNG terminals.”

On July 16, 2015, FERC’s Office of Enforcement (“Enforcement”) released a “Staff Notice of Alleged Violations” (“Notice”) stating that it had preliminarily determined that Columbia Gas Transmission LLC (“Columbia Gas”) violated Part 4 of the General Terms and Conditions of the pipeline’s FERC Gas Tariff by posting notices of auctions of available firm capacity on the password-protected side of its Electronic Bulletin Board (“EBB”), rather than the public side of the EBB, between January 1, 2010 to May 1, 2013.