By Suzanne Herel FERC last week upheld its Nov. 28 order accepting PJM’s changes to its capacity auction demand curve and related parameters, denying rehearing requests by a broad group of interests (ER14-2940). PJM said the changes to the variable resource requirement (VRR) curve and related pricing inputs, including the...

By Rich Heidorn Jr. WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s liberal wing indicated support Wednesday for FERC’s jurisdiction over demand response, but the commission faced harsh questions from conservatives Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice John Roberts and swing vote Anthony Kennedy. Kennedy and Scalia challenged Solicitor General Donald Verrilli’s arguments on...

By William Opalka Entergy announced Tuesday it will close its Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, Mass., no later than June 1, 2019, marking the company’s exit from the New England market. The company blamed “poor market conditions, reduced revenues and increased operational costs” for the planned closure. The plant...

By William Opalka FERC last week granted renewable energy resources an exemption from buyer-side mitigation rules in New York’s installed capacity market, a change it said will help the state comply with federal carbon emission rules. The commission also exempted self-supply resources built by load-serving entities to meet their own...

The Market Implementation Committee last week approved rule changes implementing a new Tier 1 resource compensation plan that the group endorsed in July. The changes passed with 28 opposed and 16 abstentions. The policy requires changes to Manual 11: Energy & Ancillary Services Market Operations; Manual 28: Operating Agreement Accounting;...

By Rich Heidorn Jr. A study released last week by the American Public Power Association estimates that PJM’s Capacity Performance rules will increase costs to consumers by $7.3 billion over the 2016-2019 delivery years — a tally in line with PJM’s own estimates. But while PJM says the increased capacity...

By Amanda Durish Cook FERC has begun a non-public investigation over allegations of improprieties in MISO's April capacity auction and will hold a technical conference on the matter Oct. 20. The commission’s actions, disclosed last week, are in response to complaints filed by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Southwestern Electric...

VALLEY FORGE, Pa. — PJM is proposing a Tariff change that would allow it to release Base Capacity resources to reflect the Capacity Performance resources it acquired in the transition auctions for the 2016/17 and 2017/18 delivery years. The RTO uses its incremental auctions to sell excess capacity, or purchase...

By Marji Rosenbluth Philips It’s no secret that Direct Energy believes that PJM's Capacity Performance market structure, approved by FERC, is both over-priced and unlikely to achieve its intended results. In this op-ed piece, we explain why. PJM's Reliability Pricing Model was not designed to deal with winter peaks and...

By Rich Heidorn Jr. Generators asked PJM stakeholders last week to consider changes to the RTO’s new Capacity Performance program, saying the rules approved by the Board of Managers without stakeholder consensus are overly punitive. A group calling itself the “Supplier Coalition” asked the Markets and Reliability Committee to consider...