On May 19, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (DC Circuit) dismissed Cage Ranch Solar LLC’s and Cage Ranch Solar II, LLC’s (collectively, Cage Ranch) consolidated petitions for review of FERC orders denying Cage Ranch’s complaint and waiver request, which sought to set aside a deadline by which Southwest Power Pool, Inc.’s (SPP) tariff (Tariff) required Cage Ranch to post financial security for network upgrade costs to support its interconnection requests and maintain its queue position. The DC Circuit dismissed the petitions for failure to demonstrate a concrete injury in fact necessary to establish Article III standing.
The dispute arose from Cage Ranch’s efforts to develop a 900 MW solar facility in Texas and interconnect it to the electrical grid through SPP’s cluster-based interconnection process. After a Phase 2 study allocated Cage Ranch $311 million in network upgrade costs, the SPP Tariff required Cage Ranch to post 20% of the assigned upgrade costs less the amount of any security that customer has already provided (here, approximately $60 million) in financial security within 15 business days of the Phase 2 study results to maintain its queue position. Cage Ranch declined to post the required security and, on the day of the deadline, filed a complaint with FERC challenging SPP’s Phase 2 cost-allocation methodology, and requesting waiver of the security deadline and automatic queue withdrawal provisions. In its complaint, Cage Ranch argued that SPP used a fundamentally flawed study model to assign network upgrade costs. FERC denied the complaint and waiver requests and reaffirmed that decision in its rehearing order, prompting Cage Ranch’s petitions for review to the DC Circuit.
In dismissing the petitions sua sponte, the DC Circuit found that Cage Ranch failed to demonstrate that it incurred any actual monetary loss or imminent costs because it no longer had an active interconnection request. Although the court treated Cage Ranch’s loss of its queue position as the only cognizable injury, the court found that Cage Ranch failed to provide sufficient evidence quantifying the costs of its claimed injury (such as losses on land investments or development costs) or explaining why “losing a queue position effectively kills a project” in light of Cage Ranch’s ability to either: (1) post financial security before the deadline and retain its initial queue position, or (2) resubmit an interconnection request and receiving a new position. According to the court, Cage Ranch pursued neither option, and FERC’s decision denying Cage Ranch’s complaint and waiver request did not change those opportunities. Therefore, the DC Circuit rejected Cage Ranch’s “desired-products” theory because the challenged orders did not change the terms under which interconnection was available to Cage Ranch. Absent evidence of concrete harm tethered to the loss of its queue position, the DC Circuit held that Petitioners lacked standing and dismissed the petitions for review.
The DC Circuit’s per curiam decision is available here.