Page 1159 – RTO Insider

May 31, 2018

NYISO Ready to Meet Summer Demand

NYIS O said Wednesday it is prepared to meet peak demand this summer, with a total of 42,169 MW of power resources available to cover an expected peak of 32,904 MW — 2.9% above the long-term average.

Demand last summer peaked at 29,699 MW on July 19, coming in 7% below the 10-year average of 31,968 MW. New York set its record peak of 33,956 MW at the end of a week-long heat wave in July 2013.

NERC standards mandate that each ISO/RTO secure enough day-ahead capacity to meet the single largest contingency. The ISO’s summer capacity assessm e nt used a “deterministic approach” to approximate capacity margins and operating reserves for baseline and extreme weather conditions, according to Wes Yeoman, NYISO vice president of operations. The assessment uses a set of projected derates based on five-year Equivalent Forced Outage Rate demand averages.

At baseline peak weather conditions, the ISO forecasts 1,599 MW of capacity margin surplus, which is above the baseline peak load, plus 2,620 MW of required operating reserves. The baseline peak forecast is up 1,214 MW over last year’s forecast.

nyiso peak demand extreme weather — | *NYISO*

For the 90th percentile forecast of extreme weather conditions, the ISO projects a capacity margin shortfall of 241 MW, an increase of 1,683 MW over last year’s extreme weather forecast.

The ISO reported 39,325 MW of generating capacity available from power plants in New York and 1,219 MW of demand response resources plus another 1,625 MW available from neighboring regions.

“Based on historical performance, the net resources projected to be available to serve during the summer peak total 37,123 MW,” said the report.

New York’s 2018 operating reserve requirement of 2,620 MW is based on the potential loss of the system’s largest single resource. Peak demand combined with operating reserves translate into a total capacity requirement of 35,524 MW.

— Michael Kuser

May 31, 2018

NERC: ERCOT, CAISO Face Summer Reliability Concerns

By Tom Kleckner

NERC said Wednesday that ERCOT and CAISO will face operational challenges and potential reliability concerns this summer because of the Texas grid’s loss of baseload generation and California’s lack of fuel assurance.

According to the organization’s summer reliability assessment, ERCOT faces a generation shortfall “due in part” to the retirement of about 4.5 GW in coal-fired generation last fall and delays in the construction of about 2.1 GW in new resources. California is facing a limit on natural gas output because of Aliso Canyon storage facility constraints, NERC said.

“It’s very important to focus on the operational aspect,” said Thomas Coleman, NERC’s director of reliability assessments, during a conference call with reporters Wednesday. “We can’t do much at this point [about resource adequacy]. We want to draw attention to how we are prepared … from an operational standpoint.”

FERC earlier this month said it would be closely monitoring ERCOT and Southern California for reliability issues this summer. Both regions lie in a portion of the West expected to be warmer than usual. (See FERC Keeps Eye on ERCOT, CAISO as Hot Summer Approaches.)

Coleman said the majority of NERC’s assessment areas “maintain sufficient resources” to meet their reference planning reserve margins this summer. The exception is ERCOT, which saw its reserve margins drop from 18% last year to a projected 10.9% this year. Given the ISO’s 13.75% planning reserve margin, ERCOT faces a capacity shortfall of 2 GW, NERC said.

No Cause for Alarm?

A Texas Reliability Entity assessment expects the ISO will be required to deploy ancillary services and contracted load control programs during peak demand periods. NERC’s study cautions that “typical generator outages expected under normal conditions” could limit ERCOT’s ability to maintain operating reserves.

Coleman said NERC took it one step further and ran an operational risk analysis that looked at typical maintenance or forced outages, extreme forced outages, extreme weather and a low-wind scenario.

“Any one of those events would drop [ERCOT] below its operating reserve margin” (of 2.3 GW) and lead to energy emergency alerts,” Coleman said, noting that operational challenges occur during times of peak demand, low wind output and generator outages.

ERCOT CAISO Summer Reliability Assessment Reserve Margin — | *NERC*

“When we don’t have the wind available, those are the types of scenarios we want to pay attention to,” he said.

NERC’s study finds the risk of load shedding caused by insufficient reserves in ERCOT’s footprint would increase under extreme summer conditions, such as above-normal temperatures and higher-than-expected generation outages.

However, the Texas grid operator has assured stakeholders there is no reason for alarm and said it plans to address the projected generation shortfall by seeking voluntary load reductions from utilities, if needed. (See ERCOT Gains Additional Capacity to Meet Summer Demand.)

Asked about a repeat of severe weather, as ERCOT experienced last August with Hurricane Harvey, Coleman said NERC was “encouraged by the level of resilience in the system last year.”

“We’ve gotten better about handling those types of events,” he said, noting most outages occur at the distribution level and don’t affect the bulk electric system. “During hurricanes, when we have distribution outages, there’s less load, so that doesn’t necessarily pose challenges.”

California Challenges

Coleman said NERC feels “very comfortable” about CAISO’s reserve margins but also noted the Aliso Canyon operational constraint continues to affect the availability of natural gas in Southern California, increasing ramping requirements. Below-normal hydro generation is also projected to exacerbate the potential reliability concern, according to the NERC assessment.

“If we don’t have [the] ability to get the fuel there, we could have operational challenges,” Coleman said.

NERC said the need for fast-ramping gas generation and other flexible resources across California also presents a reliability challenge for the bulk power system this summer because of the state’s high penetration of renewables. CAISO in March set an all-time record when 49.95% of demand was served by transmission-connected solar.

Reserve Margin ERCOT CAISO NERC Summer Reliability Assessment — | *CAISO*

The ISO declared its first Stage 1 emergency in 10 years in May 2017. In October, it activated demand response measures but did not require any load shed.

NERC’s study says MISO has a summer reserve margin of 19.1%, above its target reserve margin of 17.1%. It is expected to rely increasingly on emergency operating procedures to access resources needed to meet load and operating reserves.

MISO’s actions are anticipated to provide sufficient energy or load relief to cover the normal forecasted system conditions, the agency said. Coleman said the RTO acknowledges a 79% chance it will experience at least one Level 1 emergency this summer.

NERC conducts its reliability assessments to “provide a high-level view of resource adequacy and to identify issues that have the potential to impact bulk power system planning, development and system analysis over the summer months.” The summer assessment covers June through September.

May 31, 2018

NYISO Management Committee Briefs: May 30, 2018

RENSSELAER, N.Y. — NYISO stakeholders are being asked to weigh in on how effectively the external Market Monitoring Unit (MMU) is performing its duties before the ISO considers whether to renew its contract.

The ISO’s Management Committee (MC) on Wednesday received the annual solicitation of market participant input on the MMU’s performance. Shaun Johnson, NYISO director of market mitigation and analysis, said the three-year MMU contract with Potomac Economics runs through March 31, 2019. The ISO’s Tariff calls for the Board of Directors to oversee and review the MMU’s performance.

The MMU’s duties include attending meetings with stakeholders; ensuring wholesale markets function efficiently and appropriately; and identifying market violations, design flaws and power abuses. The unit also evaluates significant proposed revisions to NYISO’s market rules.

NYISO MMU market monitoring unit — An example of the detailed analysis performed by NYISO’s MMU. | *Potomac Economics*

The Monitor must additionally produce annual and quarterly state of the market reports assessing the performance of New York’s electrical markets. (See “Potomac Economics 2017 State of the Market Report” in NYISO Business Issues C o mmittee Briefs: May 16, 2018.)

As presented at the Sept. 11, 2017, Budget and Priorities Working Group, the MMU budget for this year is $4.1 million, a $600,000 increase over the previous year to cover added cybersecurity costs and support capacity market enhancements.

Potomac Economics also monitors the ERCOT and MISO markets.

NYISO will accept stakeholder comments on the MMU’s performance until June 21, 2018. They can be submitted to Johnson at sjohnson@nyiso.com and Leigh Bullock at lbullock@nyiso.com. All written comments will be treated as confidential to protect commercially sensitive matters.

— Michael Kuser

May 30, 2018

PJM Urges FERC to Act on ‘Jump Ball’ Despite Criticism

By Rory D. Sweeney

PJM is pressing FERC to make a decision on the RTO’s “jump ball” capacity filing, arguing that the commission is within its authority to do so and pointing out what it considers to be hypocrisy in opponents’ criticism of the filing (ER18-1314).

The RTO’s 38 pages of comments filed May 25 pushed back on widespread condemnation of PJM’s proposal that FERC choose between two plans to isolate subsidized resources within its capacity auction in order to prevent them from suppressing prices. (See PJM Capacity Proposals Widely Panned.)

PJM reiterated its claim that the “status quo is not an option,” arguing that either its own capacity repricing proposal or the MOPR-Ex developed largely by PJM’s Independent Market Monitor would be reasonable. It also addressed concern about asking FERC to choose between the proposals, contending that it could have filed its repricing proposal first and — if rejected — then filed the MOPR-Ex.

pjm ferc jump ball subsidized resources — The Hope Creek and Salem nuclear units on Artificial Island in southern New Jersey | *BHI Energy*

But PJM neglected to address the question of how it would have prioritized which of the proposals would’ve been filed first. The RTO received significant criticism for filing its own proposal — which would give subsidized units a capacity obligation but remove their influence from the calculation of the clearing price — without stakeholder support. MOPR-Ex, which would extend PJM’s existing minimum offer price rule to bar subsidized resources from receiving a capacity commitment, garnered more stakeholder support but ultimately failed in an endorsement vote.

PJM argued that the decision is within FERC’s authority and represents an important issue for the commission, noting the commission’s recent approval of “MOPR-style rules” in ISO-NE, a reference to its Competitive Auctions with Sponsored Policy Resources (CASPR).

“Ample precedent makes clear that PJM’s 2018 wholesale capacity market rules fall squarely within the commission’s exclusive jurisdiction, leaving no room for argument that changes to the offer price and clearing price rules somehow exceed the commission’s authority or rob states of their authority,” PJM wrote. “Restoring wholesale prices to just and reasonable levels — meaning a price higher than the price that would have resulted had the state program been ignored — is not an intrusion into state prerogatives.”

The RTO’s comments frequently cast the criticisms of its efforts as hypocritical.

“The commission should consider carefully each of these narratives, which in essence amounts to two sides of a single coin,” PJM said. “A curious outcome of all the advocacy around price consequence is discovery that the same parties claiming PJM’s prices are too low, in the next breath, argue for state and federal subsidy programs because such programs will prevent PJM’s prices from rising.”

PJM identified those parties as “several companies owning legacy coal and nuclear generation.” The RTO also disparaged a Brattle Group report on the price impacts from closing nuclear plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania as “so astonishingly incomplete they leave no doubt as to the political calculation behind their preparation.”

PJM noted that clearing prices were higher in its Base Residual Auction for delivery year 2021/22 and that roughly 7,000 MW of nuclear power failed to clear. The higher prices helped the resources that did clear.

“The nearly 20,000 MW of nuclear resources that did clear this year’s auction, along with legacy coal, gas, and renewable resources, all had their future financial picture improve markedly based on weaker units failing to clear and clearing prices responding,” PJM said.

PJM suggested that they could pay “subsidized resources a different price, recognizing their different circumstances … to alleviate the price objections some have leveled against capacity repricing.”

PJM also disputed an Exelon argument that FERC should factor in environmental externalities such as carbon, saying FERC “is not an environmental regulator.”

“Let’s be honest, or at least more direct. The PJM state programs in question are designed to retain particular nuclear resources,” PJM fired back at critics. “If the more generic goal was to reward resources for their carbon free attributes, these programs would compensate all (not just financially challenged) nuclear plants, traditional renewable resources, demand response, and new investment, including new nuclear, that furthered the carbon free goal.”

May 30, 2018

FERC Rejects MISO Network Resource Process Streamlining

By Amanda Durish Cook

FERC on Tuesday rejected a MISO proposal to streamline the RTO’s process to define and qualify its network resources, saying the changes would cause Tariff discrepancies.

“MISO’s proposed revisions … lead to inconsistencies in its Tariff,” FERC said in denying the filing without prejudice (ER 1 8-502).

MISO filed the change in December to eliminate a requirement that Network Resource Interconnection Service (NRIS) generators must be qualified as a designated network resource in the RTO’s Open Access Same-Time Information System (OASIS). MISO also proposed to remove a provision requiring network customers to “un-designate” extra capacity on OASIS before offering it into the RTO’s markets and annual capacity auction.

ferc miso network resources — | © *RTO Insider*

The revisions would have reduced the information customers have to provide on Network Integration Transmission Service applications, including maintenance records and whether a unit will be an internal resource. MISO characterized the requirements as nothing more than “administrative steps.”

MISO said NRIS resources already demonstrate their deliverability publicly, adding that it generally doesn’t perform an additional study when network load designates a resource with NRIS. The RTO said the move would cut down on the amount of “duplicative information” it receives and increase efficiency for itself and market participants. MISO added it had “no downstream processes that rely on the designation information of NRIS resources.”

But FERC said MISO’s plan as worded could introduce confusion among its customers.

The commission noted MISO’s proposed changes interchangeably use the terms “network load,” “transmission provider’s network load” and “network customer’s network load.” FERC had originally asked for clarification on the filing in February on similar use of the terms, and MISO responded by taking out some, but not all, of the language.

“These changes could lead to a misunderstanding of the ownership of network load,” the commission said in the May 29 order.

The Missouri Joint Municipal Electric Utilities Commission and WPPI Energy protested MISO’s filing, saying the proposed changes appeared to “erode” and “hollow out” the RTO’s current obligation to plan and provide for the firm delivery of network resources to network load economically dispatched and regulated by network customers who pay MISO’s load-ratio network service charge.

FERC said it would not address those concerns since MISO could not demonstrate its revisions were just and reasonable. MISO had contended that the two organizations misunderstood its revisions.

May 30, 2018

CalFire Says PG&E Caused 4 Wildfires Last Year

By Jason Fordney

Trees contacting Pacific Gas and Electric distribution lines caused four Northern California wildfires last year that burned about 9,400 acres, state investigators said.

After “extensive and thorough investigations,” the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire) determined PG&E lines sparked the LaPorte Fire in Butte County (which burned 8,400 acres), the McCourtney Fire in Nevada County (76 acres), the Lobo Fire in Nevada County (821 acres) and the Honey Fire in Butte County (76 acres).

calfire pge california wildfires — CalFire determined that trees contacted PG&E power lines, causing the LaPorte, McCourtney, Lobo and Honey wildfires

Tree limbs contacting lines caused the Lobo and Honey fires, and a tree falling onto power lines caused the McCourtney Fire, CalFire s a id in state m ent. The LaPorte Fire occurred after branches fell onto a PG&E power line.

While CalFire found no violation of state law related to the La Porte Fire, the other three fires were allegedly due to the utility not adequately trimming vegetation near its lines.

“The McCourtney, Lobo [and] Honey investigations have been referred to the appropriate county district attorney’s offices for review,” CalFire said.

The agency said the fires, which were among the smaller of the more than 170 fires that burned about 245,000 acres in Northern California last October, were the first to be investigated. The four fires caused structural damage but injured no civilians or firefighters.

Wildfire liability has become a major issue for PG&E as it fights civil lawsuits and lobbies the state for a change in laws related to blazes stemming from utility equipment. The utility, as well as Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric, said they cannot be held solely responsible for increasingly high-risk fire conditions, including climate change and drought. (See Profits Down, PG&E Fi g hts Wildfire Liability, Edison International P resses Wildfire Cost Recovery.) Aside from civil lawsuits faced by the utilities, the California Public Utilities Commission has denied SDG&E recovery for some wildfire costs.

Last month, state Sen. William Dodd (D) introduced a bill (SB 1 0 88) that would allow utilities to recover wildfire costs if they conform to state-regulated safety plans. (See Calif. Legislation Shie l ds Utilities from Wildfire Costs.) The Senate Appropriations Committee issued a “do pass” recommendation for the legislation on May 25. The bill was recently amended with provisions requiring that utility safety plans include a program to evaluate technological solutions such as distributed energy and allowing a utility to contract with a distributed energy operator if the operator meets insurance requirements to cover direct damages caused by failure of the distributed facilities to comply with contractual terms.

May 30, 2018

NERC: ERCOT, CAISO Face Summer Reliability Concerns

By Tom Kleckner

NERC said Wednesday ~~that~~ its annual summer reliability assessment indicates ERCOT and CAISO will face operational challenges and potential reliability concerns this summer, thanks to the two ISOs’ respective loss of baseload generation and lack of fuel assurance.

According to the agency’s summer assess m ent, ERCOT faces a generation shortfall “due in part” to the retirement of about 4.5 GW in coal-fired generation last fall and construction delays of about 2.1 GW in new resources. California is facing a limit on natural gas output due to Aliso Canyon storage facility constraints, NERC said.

FERC earlier this month said it would be closely monitoring ERCOT and Southern California for reliability issues this summer. Both regions lie in a portion of the Western United .States. expected to be warmer than usual. (See FERC K eeps Eye on ERCOT, CAISO as Hot Summer Approaches.)

Coleman said the majority of NERC’s assessment areas “maintain sufficient resources” to meet their reference planning reserve margins this summer. The exception is ERCOT, which saw its reserve margins drop from 18% last year to a projected 10.9% this year with the coal plant retirements and delay in new resources. Given the ISO’s 13.75% planning reserve margin, ERCOT faces a capacity shortfall of 2 GW, NERC said.

No Cause for Alarm?

A Texas Reliability En t ity assessment expects the ISO could be required to deploy ancillary services and contracted load control programs during peak demand periods. NERC’s study cautions that “typical generator outages expected under normal conditions” could limit ERCOT’s ability to maintain operating reserves.

Coleman said NERC took it one step further and ran an operational risk analysis that looked at typical maintenance or forced outages, extreme forced outages, extreme weather and a low-wind scenario.

“When we don’t have the wind available, those are the types of scenarios we want to pay attention to,” he said.

However, the Texas grid operator has assured stakeholders there is no reason for alarm, and said it plans to address the projected generation shortfall by seeking voluntary load reductions from utilities, if needed. (See ERCOT Gains A d ditional Capacity to Meet Summer Demand.)

Asked about a repeat of severe weather, as ERCOT experienced last August with Hurricane Harvey, Coleman said NERC was “encouraged by the level of resilience in the system last year.”

California Challenges

Coleman said NERC feels “very comfortable” about CAISO’s reserve margins, but also noted the Aliso Canyon operational constraint continues to affect the availability of natural gas in Southern California, increasing ramping requirements. Below-normal hydro generation is also projected to exacerbate the potential reliability concern, according to the NERC assessment.

“If we don’t have [the] ability to get the fuel there, we could have operational challenges,” Coleman said.

The California grid declared its first stage 1 emergency in 10 years last May. In October, it activated demand response measures, but did not require any load shed.

NERC’s study saysid MISO has a summer reserve margin of 19.1%, above its target reserve margin of 17.1%, due to increased forced outage rates. It is expected to ~~increasingly~~ rely increasingly on emergency operating procedures to access resources needed to meet load and operating reserves.

MISO’s actions are anticipated to provide sufficient energy or load relief to cover the normal forecasted system conditions, the agency said. Coleman said the ISO acknowledges a 79% chance it will experience at least one level 1 emergency this summer.

May 28, 2018

Brookfield Granted NYISO ICAP Waiver

FERC last week granted Brookfield Energy Marketing a one-time NYISO Tariff waiver allowing the company to avoid paying a penalty for a clerical error related to its external capacity resource interconnection service (CRIS) rights offer obligation (ER18-1177).

External CRIS rights provide their holder with a long-term ability to import capacity into the New York Control Area but require the holder to commit to supplying a specified number of megawatts of external installed capacity (ICAP) to the NYCA for a period of at least five years through one of NYISO’s auctions.

nyiso brookfield energy cris icap — Brookfield’s 296-MW Holtwood Hydropower Station in Pennsylvania.

Any entity failing to offer capacity in accordance with Tariff requirements incurs a financial penalty equal to 1.5 times the ICAP Spot Market Auction clearing price, multiplied by the number of megawatts committed.

Brookfield said that an employee submitting the company’s offer for the ISO’s January 2017 ICAP auction inadvertently omitted a detail that would have automatically associated the offer with the company’s CRIS rights and satisfied the remainder of its offer obligation. The company contended that it discovered the error too late to be remedied by other means.

Brookfield claimed it acted in good faith and that the waiver would be limited in scope. The ISO did not oppose Brookfield’s waiver request, stating the problem did not affect market outcomes or impair other market participants’ capacity import offers.

The commission agreed but reminded “Brookfield, and other entities holding external CRIS rights, of the importance of fulfilling NYISO’s Tariff requirements in a careful and timely manner.”

— Michael Kuser

May 28, 2018

FERC Seeks More Detail in Entergy Cost Equalization Dispute

By Amanda Durish Cook

FERC last week ordered Entergy and the Louisiana Public Service Commission to provide it with more information to determine whether its past decision not to order refunds in the ongoing dispute over the company’s equalization of production costs remains appropriate.

FERC’s voluntary remand of its decision revives the possibility that Entergy may be required to issue refunds over its multistate system agreement (EL01-88-019).

ferc entergy allocation of production costs — Galvez Building housing the Louisiana Public Service Commission | *LA.gov*

“Having re-examined the matter, the commission seeks further submissions by the parties on whether refunds are appropriate given the circumstances presented in this case,” FERC said in a May 22 order.

The commission set the matter to a paper hearing and ordered Entergy and the Louisiana PSC to submit initial briefs and evidence on refunds within 30 days.

The issue dates to 2001, when the PSC and the New Orleans City Council filed a complaint with FERC, arguing that Entergy’s allocation of production costs among its operating companies in its 1982 multistate system agreement had become unfair.

In the past, the operations of Entergy’s subsidiaries were more integrated, with different transmission and generation facilities functioning as a single electric system. Entergy’s system agreement consisted of several service schedules that allocated costs among the operating companies according to a responsibility ratio.

In a 2005 order, FERC found that Entergy’s allocation of production costs across its subsidiaries was no longer in rough equalization. And while the commission required Entergy to employ a “bandwidth” remedy that ensured no operating company had production costs more than 11% above or below the system average, it declined to order refunds for the years prior to the bandwidth calculations.

The commission originally found that the Federal Power Act prohibits refunds among electric companies of a registered holding company “to the extent that one or more of the electric companies making refunds cannot surcharge its customers or otherwise obtain retroactive cost recovery.” FERC also said that there was no evidence in the record that the operating companies making refunds could receive a retroactive recovery of their costs and rejected the PSC’s request for a rehearing over refunds.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2008 remanded the case back to FERC, questioning whether the commission had adequately supported its decision not to order refunds. However, by 2014, FERC had again declined to order refunds in another rehearing requested by the PSC.

FERC now says the PSC’s past arguments are influencing its decision to revisit the possibility of refunds.

In March, the D.C. Circuit decided that no refunds were necessary in a closely related case involving Entergy’s multistate system agreement. In that case, FERC also determined Entergy’s practices were unfair because the company’s formula for determining peak load responsibility included interruptible load in addition to firm load. (See No Refunds in 20-Year-Old Entergy Rate Complaint.)

May 28, 2018

PSE&G on the Hook for Bergen-Linden Costs

By Rory D. Sweeney

Public Service Electric and Gas appears to be out of targets to help it pay for its $1.2 billion Bergen-Linden Corridor (BLC) project. FERC last week denied a complaint from the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to reallocate the project’s costs, leaving PSE&G to pay for most of the project meant to support the “wheeling” arrangement Consolidated Edison terminated in April 2017 (EL18-54).

For decades, Con Ed paid to wheel 1,000 MW of power through PSE&G’s facilities in northern New Jersey for delivery to New York City. But Con Ed terminated the deal after PJM attempted to allocate $720.4 million of the project’s costs to it through the RTO’s Regional Transmission Expansion Plan. Two merchant transmission facilities that connect northern New Jersey to New York City — Hudson Transmission Partners and Linden VFT — were allocated $103.2 million and $9.6 million, respectively, and PSE&G was assigned $88.4 million.

FERC initially approved reassigning $530.8 million of Con Ed’s allocation to Hudson and $122 million to Linden. But that was nixed after the merchants successfully petitioned FERC to amend their interconnection service agreements and reduce their responsibility. (See NJ Merchant Tx Operators Win Relief on Upgrade Costs.)

ferc bergen linden corridor pge bpu — | *PJM*

The BPU filed its complaint just days after FERC allowed the ISA changes, arguing that PJM’s Tariff and its joint operating agreement with NYISO don’t properly allocate the costs of some RTEP projects to merchant transmission facilities and other transmission customers.

After the “wheel” was canceled, PJM and NYISO agreed to maintain a smaller 400-MW version, called the operational baseflow (OBF), until the separate systems were stabilized to operate without the flow. The BPU argued that the way the grids interact provides a benefit to NYISO for which PJM customers, specifically those in New Jersey, aren’t being compensated.

“NYISO continues to model flows over the lines previously used for the Con Edison wheeling arrangement for purposes of determining its resource adequacy requirement, while PJM models its system with little or no support from NYISO,” the BPU told FERC.

Therefore, NYISO doesn’t need to maintain as much capacity while New Jersey must procure more. PSE&G’s zone often clears separately from the rest of the RTO in PJM capacity auctions. In last week’s Base Residual Auction for the 2021/22 delivery year, for example, it cleared at $204/MW-day versus $140/MW-day for much of the RTO. (See Capacity Prices Jump in Most of PJM.)

The BPU complaint said that without the relief the regulators requested, the PSE&G locational deliverability area’s capacity costs will jump by as much as 78.6%, “or an increase of $275 million in a single year and reoccurring annually for the foreseeable future.”

Because the Bergen-Linden project was meant to address reliability issues created by the “wheel,” it’s only fair those beneficiaries should pay for them, the BPU said.

“Parties have sought to escape those costs by terminating or otherwise amending contracts,” the BPU told FERC.

NYISO responded that costs can’t be allocated in New York because the project is fully within PJM’s boundaries, and that it no longer relies on the facilities for reliability. PJM said that “it is the physical features of the transmission system in northern New Jersey that are driving the need for the BLC project.”

Con Ed, Linden, Hudson, the New York Power Authority and several other New York stakeholders argued against the complaint. PSE&G, the New Jersey Division of Rate Counsel, the Public Power Association of New Jersey, PJM’s Independent Market Monitor and other RTO stakeholders supported the complaint.

The commission agreed with opponents of the complaint that the BLC was planned solely through PJM’s RTEP, that NYISO never agreed to pay for any of it and that the PJM-NYISO JOA “does not preclude the sharing of these benefits without compensation, even if those benefits are not equal at a given point in time.”

It also said the merchant transmission facilities can have their service curtailed for reliability or economic reasons now, so they can’t effectively replicate the firm priority benefits they had before and therefore shouldn’t be held accountable for any upgrades that support that priority.

FERC declined to rule on whether those facilities should be eligible to sell capacity in NYISO, saying that was out of the scope of the complaint.