The U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division is looking into Constellation Energy’s proposed purchase of Calpine, sending an information request to PJM for market data by May 30 as part of its review.
“The Department of Justice request of PJM is not unusual for a transaction like Constellation’s acquisition of Calpine,” Constellation said in a statement. “We proposed a robust plan for satisfying the Department of Justice’s review of the transaction, and we are confident that our filing will be approved in a timely manner. Once approved, Constellation will be even better positioned to deliver reliable and affordable energy to our customers from coast to coast.”
The proposed merger is the largest in years among independent power producers, and while the two firms have operations across the country, they overlap most in PJM, where potential market power issues have dominated the debate in FERC’s docket for the deal (EC25-43). (See Constellation-Calpine Merger Draws Protests over Market Power Concerns in PJM.)
FERC filed a notice on April 14 seeking comment from parties in the docket on proposed communications between its staff and DOJ’s Antitrust Division while its own review is pending. That was not opposed by either side, though a group of protesters asked FERC to file reports on any communications, while Constellation responded that it has asked for confidential treatment of the commercially sensitive information in the docket.
“The applicants support any interagency communication that will lead to a more efficient review and approval of the application,” Constellation told FERC.
DOJ’s request to PJM seeks a broad range of market data since Jan. 1, 2023, including details on every generator in the market and all of the participants in auctions for energy, capacity and financial transmission rights. It asks for details on all generators’ bids into PJM markets, any outages and the resulting locational marginal prices.
The request also seeks information on net flows over transmission lines for the real-time and day-ahead markets and the transfer capabilities of the lines PJM manages, including warning levels and transfer limits.
DOJ also wants details on all imports and exports, including the entities behind them and their contract path. It also asked for transfer capabilities between PJM and its neighboring systems on an hourly basis.
The request asks for every time the three-pivotal-supplier test was applied and led to mitigation of generators in the energy markets. It seeks breakdowns by year for how many hours specific generators had their offers mitigated.
DOJ also wants information on the capacity market dating back to the 2024/25 auction, held in 2022, including every local delivery area’s demand curves, details on every generator’s offer into the market and details on generators using the fixed resource requirement alternative.
Finally, the department is seeking details on the entire market’s portfolio of FTRs and auction revenue rights since Jan 1, 2023.
