On April 25, 2011, Entergy Corporation (“Entergy”) announced that the company will be joining the Midwest Independent System Operator (“Midwest ISO” or “MISO”).  Entergy expects to formally join MISO by December 2013.  Entergy anticipates making their initial filings with retail regulators on or before May 12, and soon thereafter, Entergy will file their formal retail regulatory filings.

On April 21, 2011, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC” or the “Commission”) released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NOPR”) that would require the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (“NERC”) to provide Commission staff with access to electronic tags (“e-Tags”) or requests for interchange used to schedule wholesale power.

On April 25, 2011, the New York Independent System Operator (“NYISO”) issued its annual review document, “Power Trends 2011: Energizing New York’s Legacy of Leadership”  (the “Report”).  In the Report, NYISO president and CEO, Stephen G. Whitley, announced: “[t]he immediate outlook for New York’s electric system is positive, but the sustained adequacy of power resources may be affected by a variety of emerging challenges.”

On April 27, 2011, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) and Securities Exchange Commission (“SEC”) issued a proposed rule to further define “swap,” “security-based swap” and “security-based swap agreement” in connection with the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (“Dodd-Frank”).

On April 21, 2011, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC” or the “Commission”) Commission affirmed the Initial Decision of Administrative Law Judge Carmen Cintron (the “Initial Decision”) determining that Brian Hunter violated the anti-manipulation rule in the first fully-litigated proceeding under FERC’s enhanced enforcement authority under § 4A of the Natural Gas Act.  The rule prohibits manipulation in connection with transactions under the jurisdiction of FERC (see January 28, 2010 edition of the WER).  The Commission also ordered a $30 million dollar civil penalty.

On April 21, 2011, FERC released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NOPR”) that would require non-public utilities with annual wholesale sales greater than four million megawatt hours (“MWh”) and non-public utility balancing authorities with more than one million MWh in wholesale sales to submit Electric Quarterly Reports (“EQRs”). 

The Commission recently issued two orders addressing controversial capacity market issues.  On April 12, 2011, the Commission approved a rate filing by PJM Interconnection, LLC (“PJM”) that will modify the minimum offer price rule (“MOPR”) to prevent what PJM called the threat of uneconomic entry of new generation (the “PJM Order”).  On April 13, 2011, the Commission addressed issues in connection with ISO-New England’s (“ISO-NE”) Forward Capacity Market (“FCM”) and ordered ISO-NE to develop an offer-floor mitigation “construct” similar to that of PJM and the New York Independent System Operator (“NYISO”) in order to deal with Out of Market (“OOM”) resources suppressing clearing prices below competitive levels (“ISO-NE Order”).