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PJM Market Monitor Recommends That FERC Should Reject Or Hold Hearings On Proposed Changes To Interconnection Service Agreements
The PJM Interconnection’s market monitor recommend that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) should reject or hold a hearing process on proposed changes to an interconnection service agreement, or ISA, that would provide power directly from a majority-owned Talen Energy nuclear power plant to an Amazon data center.
Monitoring Analytics said, “PJM needs to provide a comprehensive analysis of the impact of removing significant levels of generation from the market,” “PJM has made a series of critical policy decisions that are embedded in this ISA involving, among other things, how backup power is handled, that are very different from positions that PJM has previously taken on related matters in the stakeholder process.”
According to Monitoring Analytics, the proposed ISA raises market issues, and the agreement could set precedent for co-located load at other power plants in PJM.
AEP and Exelon’s opposed the proposed agreement while some retail suppliers participating in the matter including Constellation Energy and Vistra contend AEP and Exelon’s protests over the proposed agreement aim to stifle innovative power supply arrangements for data centers.
As background, Talen announced in March that that it had agreed to sell a planned data center campus in Pennsylvania to Amazon’s cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services, for $650 million.
To facilitate the sale of power to the co-located data center, in June PJM asked FERC to approve an amended ISA among the grid operator, Susquehanna Nuclear and PPL Electric Utilities. The amended ISA would increase the behind-the-meter connection between the power plant and the co-located data center to 480 MW from 300 MW in the existing ISA.
