FERC has approved an agreement resolving an investigation into alleged violations by Berkshire Power Co. of ISO-NE energy offer rules. Tenaska Power Services, the parent company of Berkshire Power at the time of the violations, has agreed to pay a $51,000 penalty to the U.S. Treasury and $78,354 plus interest in disgorgement to ISO-NE (IN25-13).

The investigation concerned reductions to the dispatch requirement of Berkshire Power’s 251-MW gas generator in January 2021. The generator had a 229-MW capacity supply obligation (CSO) at the time. FERC’s Office of Enforcement and Regulatory Accounting concluded Tenaska violated the ISO-NE tariff “by modifying the real-time offers of the Berkshire Generator based on economic factors rather than physical availability.”

Under the rules of ISO-NE’s capacity market, resources with CSOs must offer into the day-ahead and real-time energy markets an amount of power that meets or exceeds their CSOs. Resources can reduce their offer requirements only to account for physical — not economic — limits.

According to the stipulation of facts under the Jan. 12 consent agreement, the generator could have procured enough gas to operate at its 251-MW economic maximum, though it would have had to pay a higher price for the gas than it anticipated when it made its day-ahead offer for Jan. 11, 2021. Berkshire Power asked ISO-NE to reduce the maximum dispatch of the generator to 150 MW, failing to disclose that the unit did not have a physical limit.

The Office of Enforcement “determined that attempts to reduce the dispatched level of the Berkshire Generator resource falsely and misleadingly communicated to ISO-NE a physical inability to operate at the resource’s CSO,” adding that “such a reduction was not due to a physical inability to operate but rather an economic decision not to procure higher-priced fuel.”

FERC ruled that the agreement between Tenaska and the Office of Enforcement “is a fair and equitable resolution of the matters concerned and is in the public interest, as it reflects the nature and seriousness of the conduct and recognizes the specific considerations stated above and in the agreement.”