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 issued an order establishing an investigation under Federal Power Act Section 206 into whether ISO New England Inc. (“ISO-NE”), PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. (“PJM”), and Southwest Power Pool, Inc. (“SPP”) (collectively, “Responding RTOs”) may be inconsistently or more expansively implementing Order No. 1000’s immediate need reliability project exemption, which allows Responding RTOs to establish immediate need reliability projects exempt from Order No. 1000’s regional transmission planning competition requirements. In the order,…

On October 8, 2019, FERC accepted ISO New England Inc.’s (“ISO-NE”) public and private versions of a filing containing the de-list bids (“De-List Bids”) and substation auction test prices (“Test Prices”) for the fourteenth Forward Capacity Auction (“FCA 14”), to be held in February 2020 and to become effective August 27, 2019. In the process, FERC also granted ISO-NE’s requested waiver of FERC’s regulations requiring parties requesting privileged treatment of their filings to provide a…

On September 30, 2019, President Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate James P. Danly for Commissioner of FERC. If confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Danly would fill the seat vacated by the passing of former Chairman Kevin McIntyre for a term to expire on June 30, 2023, resulting in three Republican Commissioners and one Democratic Commissioner.…

On September 19, 2019, FERC granted a petition for declaratory order by the New England Ratepayers Association (“New England Ratepayers”), which asked FERC to find that a New Hampshire statute, Senate Bill 365 (“SB 365”), mandating a purchase price for wholesale sales of certain biomass and waste generators in the state, is preempted by the Federal Power Act (“FPA”) and violates section 210 of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (“PURPA”).…

On September 19, 2019, FERC concurrently issued two orders granting in part separate complaints filed by American Electric Power Service Corporation (“AEP”) and the City of Prescott, Arkansas (“Prescott”) finding that, to the extent loads pseudo-tied from Midcontinent Independent System Operator, Inc. (“MISO”) to Southwest Power Pool, Inc. (“SPP”) are subject to overlapping or duplicative congestion charges by both MISO and SPP, then such charges are unjust, unreasonable, unduly discriminatory, or preferential.  On the same…