On February 20, 2025, FERC Chairman Mark Christie announced an upcoming Commissioner-led technical conference on resource adequacy in Regional Transmission Organization (“RTO”) and Independent System Operator (“ISO”) regions. The technical conference will take place over two days at FERC headquarters in Washington, D.C. on June 4, 2025, and June 5, 2025.
Chairman Christie argues that “rising demand forecasts and the failure to retain existing generators or build new adequate power generation” has been a long-time issue before FERC. At the FERC Open Meeting on February 20, 2025, Chairman Christie expressed a need to examine reliability in RTO/ISO regions alongside maintaining affordable prices in his announcement of the technical conference.
FERC announced that potential issues for discussion at the technical conference include existing and future risks to resource adequacy, the role of capacity markets in maintaining resource adequacy at just and reasonable rates, evaluating the impacts of supporting resource adequacy between capacity markets and other constructs, and the states’ role in supporting resource adequacy. FERC stated that this technical conference comes at a time when the nation’s growing electricity demand conflicts with an evolving resource mix.
A supplemental notice of the technical conference containing further details will be issued before the event. The news release announcing the technical conference is available here. Information regarding attendee registration and speaker nominations can be found here. The Notice of Commissioner-led Technical Conference, issued in Docket No. AD25-7-000, can be found here.