FERC last week issued decisions related to CAISO’s resource adequacy program and markets, as well as transmission service in the Pacific Northwest.
The commission approved six tariff revisions related to CAISO’s resource adequacy program (ER18-1). The order allows resources in a local capacity area to provide substitute capacity based on how that capacity is reflected in resource adequacy plans. It also accepted the ISO’s proposal to cap a load-serving entity’s monthly local capacity and system requirements at the same levels.
The order is a follow-up to FERC’s October 2015 acceptance of a CAISO filing regarding updates to its reliability services initiative stakeholder process. The filing included criteria for qualifying capacity values of certain resource adequacy resources, must-offer obligations and other modifications.
In another order, FERC (ER17-1459) addressed modifications it had directed CAISO to make regarding its 2006 Market Redesign and Technology Upgrade (MRTU). CAISO’s latest compliance filing was on April 21, 2017.
FERC considered six directives it had issued, saying “we find that CAISO has either complied with the outstanding directives in the September 2006 MRTU order or has provided information demonstrating circumstances have changed such that further revisions are not necessary.”
In the Northwest-related order, FERC granted Wheatridge Wind Energy’s request to direct Umatilla Electric Cooperative to interconnect with Wheatridge’s proposed 500-MW project and provide it with transmission service to the Bonneville Power Administration balancing area (TX17-1).
The project would serve a collector substation in the service territory of Columbia Basin Electric Cooperative, which had protested Wheatridge’s application, arguing that it must be the exclusive provider of transmission service to the project. Umatilla supported the Wheatridge filing.
— Jason Fordney