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By Rich Heidorn Jr. WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday upheld FERC’s jurisdiction over demand response, reversing the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 6-2 ruling. “The [Federal Power Act] provides FERC with the authority to regulate wholesale market operators’ compensation of demand response bids,” wrote Justice Elena...

By William Opalka FERC has accepted ISO-NE’s 390-MW reduction in its load forecast, reflecting the impact of distributed solar resources. The commission rejected the New England Power Generators Association’s contention that the calculations for behind-the-meter generation hadn’t been sufficiently vetted (ER16-307). “We find that ISO-NE has properly incorporated non-embedded solar...

By William Opalka Its patience strained, FERC has ordered ISO-NE to develop rules for sloped demand curves in constrained areas in time for the 11th Forward Capacity Auction in 2017. The commission ruled Dec. 28 that the ISO-NE Tariff is unjust and unreasonable because it uses vertical demand curves in...

By Ted Caddell and Suzanne Herel Exelon, which is seeking subsidies for its Illinois nuclear plants, has joined the opposition to FirstEnergy’s attempts to win guaranteed payments for its Ohio power plants. And it says it has a better offer. In a filing with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio,...

By Michael Brooks An energy trading company’s use of employee-monitoring software provided FERC investigators with evidence documenting its strategy of making riskless up-to-congestion transactions to collect line-loss credits from PJM, officials said last week. FERC last week issued a show cause order demanding more than $42 million from Coaltrain Energy...

By William Opalka FERC on Thursday reaffirmed the zero-price offer requirement in ISO-NE’s new entrant pricing rule, again rejecting complaints by Exelon and Calpine that it unreasonably suppresses capacity prices and discriminates against existing resources (EL15-23-001). The commission denied rehearing of an order from January 2015. (See FERC Upholds ISO-NE...

By Amanda Durish Cook FERC has ordered MISO to change the way it conducts capacity auctions beginning with the 2016/17 auction in April as it continues to investigate allegations of market manipulation against Dynegy (EL15-70). While the commission didn’t rule on the issue of consumer refunds, several parties to the...

By Amanda Durish Cook It’s been 15 years since FERC approved MISO as an RTO and, like a teenager, MISO is experiencing a growth spurt. Last month, the board approved an annual Transmission Expansion Plan consisting of 345 projects valued at $2.75 billion. With the exception of 2011, the plan...

By William Opalka Winter reliability, the forward capacity market and infrastructure expansion have been the dominant themes in New England in recent years, and 2016 appears to be no different. Record warmth this winter has kept power prices tame and new reliability incentive programs are expected to ensure adequate fuel...

By Suzanne Herel 2015 was a year of change for PJM, which said goodbye to CEO Terry Boston, ushered in its new Capacity Performance product and awarded its first competitively bid transmission projects under FERC Order 1000. Capacity Performance undoubtedly will be in the headlines again in 2016 under new...