On October 17, 2019, FERC issued an order establishing an investigation under Federal Power Act Section 206 into whether ISO New England Inc. (“ISO-NE”), PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. (“PJM”), and Southwest Power Pool, Inc. (“SPP”) (collectively, “Responding RTOs”) may be inconsistently or more expansively implementing Order No. 1000’s immediate need reliability project exemption, which allows Responding RTOs to establish immediate need reliability projects exempt from Order No. 1000’s regional transmission planning competition requirements. In the order, FERC established proceedings related to its concern, and directed the Responding RTOs to provide responses to certain questions regarding the implementation of the exemption.

On October 17, 2019, FERC denied a complaint filed in June 2019 by Nevada Hydro Company, Inc. (“Nevada Hydro”) alleging that the California Independent System Operator Corporation (“CAISO”) failed to follow its Tariff requirements in studying the Lake Elsinore Advanced Pumped Storage Project (“LEAPS”) as a transmission facility in CAISO’s 2018-2019 transmission planning process. FERC concluded that Nevada Hydro failed to demonstrate that CAISO violated its Tariff in studying LEAPS as a proposed reliability-driven transmission solution and as a proposed economic transmission project. Rather, FERC accepted CAISO’s conclusion that it could identify no reliability need for LEAPS, and that the project’s economic benefits are far outweighed by its costs. FERC’s October 17 order also explained that it found no evidence that CAISO’s treatment of LEAPS was biased by a predetermined conclusion that LEAPS is a generation asset or that storage cannot qualify as transmission. FERC went on to note that a project’s ability to provide transmission benefits does not equate to a transmission need, nor does it guarantee eligibility to recover costs through transmission rates.

On October 4, 2019, FERC rejected without prejudice a stated rate tariff and Open Access Transmission Tariff (“OATT”), among other filings, by Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, Inc. (“Tri-State”) and its subsidiary Thermal Cogen Partnership, L.P. (“Thermal Cogen”). Tri-State, an electric cooperative previously exempt from FERC’s jurisdiction, submitted the filings in an attempt to submit to FERC regulation after Tri-State admitted Mieco, Inc., a jurisdictional public utility, to its Board of Directors. FERC concluded that Tri-State’s stated rate tariff and OATT filings were patently deficient because they failed to provide the supporting data required for FERC to assess whether the proposed rates were just and reasonable, and for potentially interested parties to determine how the rates might affect them.

On October 4, 2019, FERC staff issued a report for users, operators, and owners of the bulk-power system to increase compliance with mandatory Critical Infrastructure Protection (“CIP”) standards and improve cybersecurity for the nation’s electric grid. In the report, FERC staff recommended, among other things, that entities:

  1. verify employees’ recurring authorizations for using removable media;
  2. ensure all employees and third-party contractors complete required trainings and properly maintain training records;
  3. consider all generation assets when categorizing bulk electric system cyber systems associated with transmission facilities; and
  4. review all firewalls to ensure there are no obsolete or overly permissive firewall access control rules in use.

On October 8, 2019, FERC accepted ISO New England Inc.’s (“ISO-NE”) public and private versions of a filing containing the de-list bids (“De-List Bids”) and substation auction test prices (“Test Prices”) for the fourteenth Forward Capacity Auction (“FCA 14”), to be held in February 2020 and to become effective August 27, 2019. In the process, FERC also granted ISO-NE’s requested waiver of FERC’s regulations requiring parties requesting privileged treatment of their filings to provide a copy of such non-public documents to intervenors who execute a protective agreement.

On October 2, 2019, revisions to the Southwest Power Pool, Inc. (“SPP”) Membership Agreement went into effect without an order, as FERC lacked a quorum to rule on SPP’s proposal due to Commissioner Richard Glick’s ongoing recusal in certain proceedings at FERC (see October 3, 2019 edition of the WER). SPP’s filing on August 2, 2019 proposed new definitions for the terms Load Serving Entity (“LSE”) and non-LSE to its Membership Agreement. A joint statement from Chairman Neil Chatterjee and Bernard McNamee indicated that they would have accepted the revisions as requested.   

On September 30, 2019, FERC issued two orders denying requests for rehearing of orders that respectively granted Pacific Gas & Electric Company (“PG&E”) and Southern California Edison Company (“SCE”) 50-basis point return-on-equity adders for their continued participation in the California Independent System Operator Corporation (“CAISO”) (“RTO-Participation Incentive”). PG&E requested the RTO-Participation Incentive as part of its nineteenth transmission owner tariff filing; SCE requested the RTO-Participation Incentive as part of its 2018 transmission revenue requirement filing. FERC granted both requests in two separate orders issued in 2017. The California Public Utilities Commission (“CPUC”) and Transmission Agency of Northern California requested rehearing of both 2017 orders; the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (“SMUD”) also requested rehearing of the 2017 order granting PG&E the RTO-Participation Incentive (CAISO, CPUC and SMUD are collectively referred to as the “California Parties”). FERC’s September 30, 2019 orders denying the California Parties’ rehearing requests concluded that is appropriate to grant both PG&E and SCE the RTO-Participation Incentive because California law does not mandate that either utility participate in CAISO.

On September 30, 2019, FERC accepted in part and rejected in part, the California Independent System Operator’s (“CAISO”) July 2, 2019 proposed revisions (“July 2 Filing”)  to its open access transmission tariff (“Tariff”) to include three unrelated mitigation measures designed to facilitate the participation of fast-ramping hydroelectric resources in the western energy imbalance market (“EIM”). FERC accepted two aspects of CAISO’s proposal related to the mitigation timing (the “Mitigation Timing” proposal and a hydro default energy bid (“DEB”) proposal, referred to as the “Hydro DEB” proposal), but rejected CAISO’s proposal to allow an EIM entity balancing authority area (“BAA”) in the real-time market to limit dispatch of incremental net exports under certain conditions (the “Net Export Limit” proposal).

On September 27, 2019, FERC approved CAISO tariff revisions to its voluntary Capacity Procurement Mechanism (“CPM”) and mandatory Reliability-Must-Run (“RMR”) framework such that all backstop procurement from resources that would otherwise retire or mothball will be addressed through CAISO’s RMR provisions. While FERC has traditionally considered RMR contracts as measures of last resort, FERC found it just and reasonable for CAISO to expand its use of such contracts to address evolving operational needs due, in part, to the increased penetration of variable energy resources in California. Commissioner Glick partially dissented, arguing that the approved tariff changes essentially provide CAISO “unchecked authority” to enter into out-of-market contracts to meet its resource adequacy needs.

On September 30, 2019, President Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate James P. Danly for Commissioner of FERC. If confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Danly would fill the seat vacated by the passing of former Chairman Kevin McIntyre for a term to expire on June 30, 2023, resulting in three Republican Commissioners and one Democratic Commissioner.