FERC last week granted Brookfield Energy Marketing a one-time NYISO Tariff waiver allowing the company to avoid paying a penalty for a clerical error related to its external capacity resource interconnection service (CRIS) rights offer obligation (ER18-1177).

External CRIS rights provide their holder with a long-term ability to import capacity into the New York Control Area but require the holder to commit to supplying a specified number of megawatts of external installed capacity (ICAP) to the NYCA for a period of at least five years through one of NYISO’s auctions.

Any entity failing to offer capacity in accordance with Tariff requirements incurs a financial penalty equal to 1.5 times the ICAP Spot Market Auction clearing price, multiplied by the number of megawatts committed.

Brookfield said that an employee submitting the company’s offer for the ISO’s January 2017 ICAP auction inadvertently omitted a detail that would have automatically associated the offer with the company’s CRIS rights and satisfied the remainder of its offer obligation. The company contended that it discovered the error too late to be remedied by other means.

Brookfield claimed it acted in good faith and that the waiver would be limited in scope. The ISO did not oppose Brookfield’s waiver request, stating the problem did not affect market outcomes or impair other market participants’ capacity import offers.

The commission agreed but reminded “Brookfield, and other entities holding external CRIS rights, of the importance of fulfilling NYISO’s Tariff requirements in a careful and timely manner.”

— Michael Kuser