By Rory D. Sweeney

A wide range of stakeholders filed comments this week requesting clarification or rehearing of FERC’s Order 841 requiring RTOs and ISOs to revise their tariffs to allow energy storage resources full access to their markets (RM16-23).

While their concerns included specific cost and billing issues, most comments focused on the high-level interaction between federal and state oversight in energy markets and argued that the order had overstepped FERC’s authority. (See FERC Rules to Boost Storage Role in Markets.)

Implementation Issue

Subsidiaries of AES, including Indianapolis Power & Light, requested clarification that the order — which doesn’t require implementation for nearly two years — doesn’t supersede MISO’s compliance requirements in response to IPL’s 2016 complaint that its 20-MW battery was being denied market participation despite its capability. That implementation is already underway. (See MISO Rules Must Bend for Storage, Stakeholders Say.)

Otherwise, AES requested a rehearing to determine ways “to help alleviate in the interim” the conditions Order 841 is supposed to correct. It argued that “the commission simultaneously predicated participation of … electric storage resources on dispatchability, which … completely fails to recognize the physical and operational characteristics of electric storage resources like” IPL’s, which “can provide their services automatically, without a need for direct interface with RTO/ISO dispatch software at all.”

FERC required RTOs/ISOs to submit compliance filings detailing how they will implement the order by Dec. 3, with implementation finished a year after they file. MISO asked for a six-month extension of the implementation deadline to accommodate distributed energy resource issues that are still pending.

“Granting the requested clarification, or rehearing, will help ensure that an RTO/ISO has sufficient flexibility to design and implement [a storage] market participation model that is technically and operationally feasible in each RTO/ISO’s specific context,” MISO said.

The RTO also asked for clarification about how the 100-kW minimum threshold for resource participation should be calculated, noting that giving grid operators flexibility in how they handle charging and discharging limits “can avoid unnecessarily limiting the range for clearing energy or reserve products.” It also requested the ability to phase in the number of very small resources that can participate each year “to avoid an unmanageable influx.” Grid operators should also be allowed to require storage resources to comply with rules necessary to address any reliability impacts that distribution utilities identify, MISO said.

Finally, the RTO requested confirmation that three potential bidding parameters are acceptable:

• Requiring storage units to provide their state-of-charge forecasts at the beginning of identified market intervals, such as day-ahead, five-minute and real-time.
• Requiring storage units that don’t provide minimum limits and can be moved smoothly between negative and positive to submit a single hourly ramp rate for the day-ahead market and “look-ahead commitment” process, or alternatively applying MISO’s real-time security-constrained economic dispatch practice if appropriate.
• Requiring units that use their state-of-charge to lock output to a narrow range to be treated as self-scheduled price-takers that can’t set prices because they are potentially unable to fulfill capacity obligations, provide ramp products or perform ancillary services.

EEI’s Issues

The Edison Electric Institute requested clarification or rehearing on whether relevant electric retail regulatory authorities (RERRAs) would have the ability to opt in or out of allowing distribution-connected resources from participating in wholesale markets because their participation “has significant implications for the operation and reliability of the distribution system.”

EEI pressed FERC on how rates should be calculated, arguing that in situations where storage is paired with a retail load behind a single retail meter, the storage should either pay for any costs to separately measure the retail and wholesale loads or the entire load should be treated as retail. The institute said that storage must still be required to “pay any applicable charges covered under state jurisdictional tariffs in order to adequately reflect their use of state jurisdictional facilities.” It also disliked the 100-kW threshold, fearing that an “influx of smaller resources” could create administrative, reliability and cost issues.

DER Technical Conference

Finally, EEI said rules developed through the separate technical conference that FERC ordered on DER aggregation (RM18-9, AD18-10) should also apply to any storage resources covered by Order 841 “to ensure consistency.”

Several organizations representing public power filed a joint request asking for the same, adding that any RTO/ISO tariff revisions regarding Order 841 not become effective until after rules from the technical conference are developed.

RERRA Clarifications

Like many other commenters, the public power organizations — which include American Municipal Power, the American Public Power Association and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association — also focused on state and local authority and requested FERC include an opt in/out mechanism for RERRAs.

“The commission should … unequivocally state that [its] regulations … do not authorize an [energy storage resource] to violate state or local laws or regulations or contract rights governing retail electric service or the local distribution of electric energy,” the organizations wrote.

Pacific Gas and Electric asked for clarification that “nothing in Order 841 is intended to suggest that the state no longer has jurisdiction to determine how power flowing from the distribution grid, through the customer meter and then into the storage resource located behind the customer meter is to be split between retail consumption and wholesale charging for later discharge into the wholesale markets.”

The company warned that “if the commission were to conclude that the state no longer has this authority, then a retail customer could use its behind-the-retail-meter storage resource as a means to completely bypass retail rates for its onsite electricity consumption. The customer could simply claim that all electricity flowing through his/her retail meter went into the storage device for later discharge into the wholesale markets, even if the power were never returned to the wholesale market but instead used to meet on-site electricity demand.”

The Organization of MISO States reiterated the request to “clearly” acknowledge “applicable state and local laws, and applicable orders and rules” of RERRAs, disqualify resources that don’t comply with those rules and develop a process to confirm that compliance.

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners filed similar requests, warning FERC to “be careful that its actions do not inhibit or conflict with authority Congress specifically reserved to NARUC’s state commission members.” The association took issue with wording in the order that barred states from deciding whether distribution-level storage in their jurisdiction can participate in wholesale markets, which it said should be eliminated.

“FERC has exclusive jurisdiction over the wholesale markets and the rules that apply to resources participating in those markets, including how such resources participate,” the association said. “Nonetheless, Congress assigned states the task of determining whether resources located behind a retail meter or on the distribution system can, in the first instance, participate in wholesale markets.”

Xcel Energy Services, filing on behalf of its four utility affiliates in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Colorado and the Southwest, expressed concern about many of the same issues other stakeholders addressed, including: not providing states with an opt-out option; complications around separate metering for wholesale and retail activity; flexibility in developing an implementation schedule; allocation of integration costs for storage resources; and the inability to institute rules for storage to address reliability issues.

Market Exclusivity

The Transmission Access Policy Study Group (TAPS) noted the RERRA opt-out issue, but it also argued that FERC erred in rejecting the group’s proposal that storage resources be required to choose exclusive participation in either wholesale or retail markets.

“To avoid market manipulation, prohibited resales of energy purchased at retail and prohibited end-use consumption of energy purchased at wholesale, distributed storage resources [should] be required to make a binding choice to participate exclusively either in the wholesale markets or at retail,” TAPS said.

Grid Operator Responsibility

CAISO requested that FERC clarify several points about grid operators’ responsibilities, including that someone — although not grid operators — must directly meter storage resources, that grid operators can require storage resources to resolve retail double-billing issues with their retail energy provider as a condition of wholesale market participation, and that storage resources not incur transmission charges when they are dispatched to charge up because they’re performing a service.

Other Clarifications

Several organizations also sought separate clarifications of the order. PJM requested confirmation that the order “does not mandate a particular methodology” for accounting for “the physical and operational characteristics” of storage resources. The California Energy Storage Alliance requested clarity on “when and why transmission charges should apply to wholesale energy purchased for later resale in the same area” because potential “double-billing would be unduly and financially burdensome to the usage of energy storage and unreasonable in the application of the cost allocation and recovery for transmission charges.”