Full Title: Considerations for State Regulators and Policymakers in a Post-FERC Order 745 World
Author(s): Cappers, Peter, and Andrew Satchwell
Publisher(s): Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Publication Date: February 1, 2015
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
By vacating the Federal Energy Commission’s (FERC) Order 745 in Electric Power Supply Association vs. FERC (EPSA, 2014) the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C Circuit injected uncertainty into the future of demand response (DR) resources in U.S. wholesale markets. Among several things, the decision explicitly identified “incentive-responsive demand” as a retail transaction, not a wholesale transaction. Thus, demand response, as the industry has come to understand it within the confines of Independent System Operators’ and Regional Transmission Organizations’ (ISO/RTO) administered energy markets, is not under FERC jurisdiction but rather state jurisdiction. However, if the Court of Appeals’ majority arguments are taken to their logical conclusion, then FERC may not have jurisdiction over DR providing any bulk-power system service, not just energy.
This is exactly the conclusion FirstEnergy Corp. espoused when, on the same day the D.C. Circuit Court panel issued its EPSA opinion, the utility filed a complaint with FERC requesting that the federal regulator require the removal of all of PJM Interconnection’s tariff provisions regarding DR in its capacity markets (FERC, 2014a). New England Power Generators Association (NEPGA) followed suit in mid-November asking FERC to order ISO New England to exclude DR resources from the region’s Forward Capacity Market (FERC, 2014b). Both FirstEnergy and NEPGA are not just asking for DR to be excluded from future participation as a directly compensated resource in wholesale capacity markets, but that all existing ISO/RTO capacity contracts with DR resources become null and void.