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State Ratepayer Advocates Push FERC For PJM Capacity Market Changes
The consumer advocates filed by the Illinois Attorney General’s Office; Illinois Citizens Utility Board; Maryland Office of People’s Counsel; New Jersey Division of Rate Counsel; Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel; and the Office of the People’s Counsel for the District of Columbia.
“Significant aspects of the BRA design are unjust and unreasonable because they subject consumers to crushing capacity clearing prices that serve little purpose while incumbent generators reap enormous windfall revenues,” the ratepayer advocates said.
Six ratepayer advocates filed a complaint at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission seeking changes to the PJM Interconnection’s capacity market design, which they said is causing “crushing” capacity prices.
FERC should direct PJM to: give priority to shovel-ready projects in constrained areas in its interconnection queue; require that all eligible resources participate in its capacity auctions; mandate that generators give the grid operator more notice when they want to retire their units and give PJM the ability to delay retirements; change its effective load carrying capability calculations for gas-fired power plants; and change its rules for demand response, the complaint said.
“PJM acts as if load increases, supply decreases, and slow entry of new resources are facts of nature when, in fact, PJM has or should have tools to manage all three without sending prices to the roof,” the ratepayer advocates from the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey and Ohio said in the complaint.
PJM expects it will propose a process for reflecting the resource adequacy contributions of RMR units in its next two capacity auctions where the contributions are “reasonably comparable to a capacity commitment,” the grid operator said in a presentation set to be discussed with stakeholders Thursday. That pending proposal could begin to address the ratepayer advocates’ concerns about RMR units.
PJM expects it will propose a process for reflecting the resource adequacy contributions of RMR units in its next two capacity auctions where the contributions are “reasonably comparable to a capacity commitment,” the grid operator said in a presentation set to be discussed with stakeholders. That pending proposal could begin to address the ratepayer advocates’ concerns about RMR units.
