By Rich Heidorn Jr.

FERC last week rejected AMP Transmission’s request for a waiver of the commission’s Standards of Conduct and requirements to maintain an Open Access Same-Time Information System (OASIS) (TS19-1).

AMP Transmission (AMPT) is an affiliate of American Municipal Power that was created to own and operate the transmission facilities of AMP and AMP’s members. AMP has purchased a 138-kV ring bus from the city of Napoleon, Ohio, and plans to purchase a similar transmission facility from Wadsworth, Ohio, both less than 50 feet in length. It also owns a 1.84-mile, 69-kV transmission line and two 69-kV station facilities in Amherst, Ohio.

AMPT said it qualified for a waiver of the OASIS and Standards of Conduct requirements because its facilities are “limited and discrete,” geographically dispersed and do not form a contiguous network.

AMPT said its transmission function employees work independently from AMP’s marketing function employees and that it has contracted with Gridforce Energy Management to provide NERC transmission compliance services.

But PJM and its Transmission Owners sector told FERC the waiver should be rejected because the marketing affiliates of AMPT will have access to nonpublic transmission information through its participation in the PJM Transmission Owners Agreement-Administrative Committee and other committees where planning or operational transmission information is discussed.

The TOs said that if the commission approved the waiver, it should prohibit AMPT from participating in PJM activities and TO meetings in which nonpublic transmission information is disclosed or discussed, noting that Old Dominion Electric Cooperative committed to similar conditions when it sought waivers from the commission.

The TOs expressed concern that a waiver would give AMP the ability to use nonpublic information available to PJM transmission operators to benefit AMP’s merchant trading — the kind of behavior the Standards of Conduct’s no-conduit rule was designed to prevent.

The commission agreed.

“We find that an entity like AMPT that participates as a transmission owner in an RTO or ISO cannot qualify for waiver of the commission’s OASIS or Standards of Conduct requirements on the basis that its facilities are limited and discrete,” FERC ruled. “Although AMPT’s facilities are limited in size, AMPT’s participation as a transmission owner in PJM qualifies its facilities as an integral part of the integrated PJM grid and therefore AMPT’s facilities cannot be considered as limited and discrete under our waiver precedent.”