On November 14, 2019, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources (“Committee”) held a hearing to consider the nomination of Dan Brouillette as Secretary of Energy. Mr. Brouillette is currently DOE’s Deputy Secretary, and has been nominated by President Trump to replace outgoing Secretary Rick Perry.…

On November 1, 2019 FERC approved a Stipulation and Consent Agreement between its Office of Enforcement (“OE”), the regional reliability entity Texas Reliability Entity, Inc. (“Texas RE”), the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (“NERC”), and Calpine Corporation (“Calpine”), related to Calpine’s alleged violations of NERC reliability standards governing maintenance and testing of batteries and other protection systems, as well as provisions of the California Independent System Operator Corporation (“CAISO”) Tariff requiring entities to report planned…

On October 24, 2019, FERC denied Harbor Cogeneration Company, LLC’s (“Harbor”) complaint alleging that Southern California Edison Company (“SoCal Edison”) misclassified certain interconnection facilities contrary to FERC’s Order No. 2003 and violated SoCal Edison’s Transmission Owner Tariff (“TO Tariff”) in directly assigning the facility costs to Harbor without FERC “approval.” FERC denied the complaint and rejected Harbor’s request for refunds, reasoning that the charges constituted valid filed rates notwithstanding that FERC did not use the…

On October 17, 2019, FERC directed PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. (“PJM”) and other interested parties to provide information with respect to how uplift costs—i.e., the costs associated with make-whole payments provided by Regional Transmission Organizations (“RTOs”) and Independent System Operators (“ISOs”) to market participants whose commitment and dispatch resulted in a shortfall between the generator’s offer and the revenue earned through market-clearing prices—should be allocated to virtual transactions in PJM, and in particular to Up-to-Congestion (“UTC”)…

On October 4, 2019, FERC staff issued a report for users, operators, and owners of the bulk-power system to increase compliance with mandatory Critical Infrastructure Protection (“CIP”) standards and improve cybersecurity for the nation’s electric grid. In the report, FERC staff recommended, among other things, that entities: verify employees’ recurring authorizations for using removable media; ensure all employees and third-party contractors complete required trainings and properly maintain training records; consider all generation assets when categorizing…

On September 27, 2019, FERC approved CAISO tariff revisions to its voluntary Capacity Procurement Mechanism (“CPM”) and mandatory Reliability-Must-Run (“RMR”) framework such that all backstop procurement from resources that would otherwise retire or mothball will be addressed through CAISO’s RMR provisions. While FERC has traditionally considered RMR contracts as measures of last resort, FERC found it just and reasonable for CAISO to expand its use of such contracts to address evolving operational needs due, in…

Summary of NOPR On September 19, 2019, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) proposing to revise its regulations implementing Sections 201 and 210 of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (PURPA) in light of changes in the energy industry since 1978.[1]…