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 25, 2019, FERC found that Vitol, Inc. (“Vitol”) and one of its traders, Federico Corteggiano, violated the Federal Power Act (“FPA”) and FERC’s rules prohibiting energy market manipulation by importing power at a loss from October 28 through November 1, 2013, at the border of the California Independent System Operator Corporation’s (“CAISO”) wholesale electric market in order to relieve transmission congestion and to benefit Vitol’s congestion revenue rights (“CRRs”) sourced at that location.…

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 17, 2019, FERC issued two separate orders accepting in part PJM Interconnection L.L.C.’s (“PJM”), and Southwest Power Pool, Inc.’s (“SPP”) proposals to comply with FERC’s orders addressing energy storage resources’ (“ESR”) participation in Regional Transmission Organization (“RTO”)-operated markets, subject to further compliance (see February 20, 2018 edition of the WER; April 10, 2019 edition of the WER; and May 22, 2019 edition of the WER for more background and context on…

On October 17, 2019, FERC denied a complaint filed in June 2019 by Nevada Hydro Company, Inc. (“Nevada Hydro”) alleging that the California Independent System Operator Corporation (“CAISO”) failed to follow its Tariff requirements in studying the Lake Elsinore Advanced Pumped Storage Project (“LEAPS”) as a transmission facility in CAISO’s 2018-2019 transmission planning process. FERC concluded that Nevada Hydro failed to demonstrate that CAISO violated its Tariff in studying LEAPS as a proposed reliability-driven transmission…

On October 4, 2019, FERC rejected without prejudice a stated rate tariff and Open Access Transmission Tariff (“OATT”), among other filings, by Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, Inc. (“Tri-State”) and its subsidiary Thermal Cogen Partnership, L.P. (“Thermal Cogen”). Tri-State, an electric cooperative previously exempt from FERC’s jurisdiction, submitted the filings in an attempt to submit to FERC regulation after Tri-State admitted Mieco, Inc., a jurisdictional public utility, to its Board of Directors. FERC concluded that…

On September 30, 2019, FERC issued two orders denying requests for rehearing of orders that respectively granted Pacific Gas & Electric Company (“PG&E”) and Southern California Edison Company (“SCE”) 50-basis point return-on-equity adders for their continued participation in the California Independent System Operator Corporation (“CAISO”) (“RTO-Participation Incentive”). PG&E requested the RTO-Participation Incentive as part of its nineteenth transmission owner tariff filing; SCE requested the RTO-Participation Incentive as part of its 2018 transmission revenue requirement filing.…