On May 8, 2017, the nation's Regional Transmission Organizations and Independent System Operators ("RTOs/ISOs") submitted their respective compliance filings to implement the directives from FERC Order No. 831, which revised FERC's regulations regarding incremental energy offer caps imposed by RTOs/ISOs.
In Order No. 831, FERC required RTOs/ISOs to cap each resource's "incremental energy offer"—the portion of an energy resource's supply market offer that can vary depending on output or demand levels—at the higher of $1,000/megawatt-hour ("MWh") or that resource's verified actual or expected cost-based incremental energy offer. FERC also required RTOs/ISOs to cap verified cost-based incremental energy offers at $2,000/MWh when calculating locational marginal prices ("LMP") (see November 21, 2016 edition of the WER).
The May 8, 2017 compliance filings were specifically tailored to each RTO/ISO, and the proposed implementation timeframes proposed by each RTO/ISO varied considerably. For example, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, Inc. ("MISO") requested an effective date of December 1, 2017, while ISO-New England, Inc. ("ISO-NE") requested an effective date of October 1, 2019, due to the complexity and time required for ISO-NE to implement the Order No. 831 changes. PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. ("PJM") requested that its proposed Tariff revisions become effective November 1, 2017, to coincide with its planned implementation of hourly offer market reforms approved in a separate proceeding (Docket No. ER16-372-000). By contrast, the Southwest Power Pool, Inc. ("SPP") requested an effective date of April 1, 2019 for its implementing Tariff revisions, and the New York Independent System Operator, Inc. ("NYISO") requested a "flexible" effective date of between October 1, 2018 and December 31, 2018. On May 1, 2017, the California Independent System Operator Corporation ("CAISO") requested a one-year extension (until May 1, 2018) to file its compliance filing, in light of the fact that, unlike other RTOs/ISOs, it does not currently have a process to verify supplier costs prior to market clearing that it could build on to verify cost-based incremental energy offers, and would need to undertake a stakeholder process to create one. FERC granted CAISO's request on May 11, 2017.
Comments on the MISO, ISO-NE, PJM, SPP, and NYISO compliance filings are due May 30, 2017, in the following respective dockets.
MISO – Docket No. ER17-1570-000
ISO-NE – Docket No. ER17-1565-000
PJM – Docket No. ER17-1567-000
SPP – Docket No. ER17-1568-000
NYISO – Docket No. ER17-1561-000
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