On March 17, 2020, FERC accepted revisions to the PJM Interconnection LLC (“PJM”) Open Access Transmission Tariff (“Tariff”) to establish enhanced procedures for compliance with the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (“NERC”) reliability standard CIP-024-2.  A majority of FERC Commissioners found that the Tariff revisions, captured in a new proposed Tariff Attachment M-4, appropriately balanced transparency obligations in transmission planning with the need to maintain strict confidentiality regarding the names, locations, and vulnerabilities of CIP-014-2…

On February 20, 2020, FERC staff issued a letter to the licensee for the FERC-licensed Anderson Dam Project (“Project”), directing the licensee to immediately initiate a full drawdown of the Project’s reservoir by October 1, 2020. The Project is located south of San Francisco and serves as an important water supply resource, but has long been identified as vulnerable to flooding and seismic events that could result in the catastrophic spilling of floodwaters into Silicon…

I. Summary of NOPR On March 19, 2020, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) proposing to revise its electric transmission incentive policy under Federal Power Act (FPA) Section 219[1] “to stimulate the development of transmission infrastructure needed to support the nation’s evolving generation resource mix, technological innovation and shifts in load patterns.”[2] FERC’s NOPR includes a number of changes to its transmission incentives policy and seeks…

On March 19, 2020, FERC granted Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s (“PG&E”), licensee for the Kilarc-Cow Creek Hydroelectric, Project No. 606 (“Project”), request for a Declaratory Order finding that the California State Water Resources Control Board (“California Board”) waived its authority to issue a water quality certification under section 401 of the Clean Water Act.  FERC’s recent opinion continues its application of the D.C. Circuit’s opinion in Hoopa Valley Tribe (see December 11, 2019 edition…

On Thursday, March 19, in lieu of its monthly Commission meeting, FERC issued a Notice regarding its response to the Novel Coronavirus Disease (“COVID-19”) and the President’s March 13 declaration of a National Emergency.  Chairman Neil Chatterjee delivered comments about the Notice and the Commission’s operations in the coming weeks and months.…

On March 12, 2020, the U.S. Senate confirmed James Danly to fill a Republican seat on the Commission by a 52-40 vote. Mr. Danly, who currently serves as FERC’s General Counsel, will serve the remainder of a term that expires June 30, 2023.…

On March 10, 2020, FERC granted rehearing of its November 9, 2018 order that accepted revisions to ISO New England Inc.’s (“ISO-NE”) Tariff modifying the calculation of the economic life of existing capacity resources seeking to retire or permanently leave the ISO-NE capacity market, to better reflect competitive market behavior. FERC determined the benefits of the Tariff revisions did not outweigh the disruption to capacity market participants’ settled expectations and, therefore rejected the economic life…