FERC has granted PJM’s request to delay its annual Base Residual Auction, from May to Aug. 14-28, 2019, after recently extending filing deadlines for its paper hearing on the RTO’s capacity construct (ER18-2222).

The initial and reply testimony deadlines were extended to Oct. 2, 2018, and Nov. 6, 2018, respectively, at the request of the Organization of PJM States Inc. (OPSI). FERC ordered the hearing after rejecting both proposals PJM offered in its “jump ball” filing and ruling that the RTO’s existing capacity construct isn’t just and reasonable. FERC instead suggested a fixed resource requirement (FRR) hybrid.

(See FERC Orders PJM Capacity Market Revamp.)

PJM asked for the delay because the extended comment deadlines indicated that FERC would be unlikely to issue a ruling on the hearing by Jan. 4, 2019, the date that PJM previously said would accommodate holding the BRA as planned in May while still including whatever revisions FERC orders.

Several PJM stakeholders have proposed revisions to the capacity auction. PJM recently unveiled to stakeholders and nondecisional FERC staff its proposal, which it dubbed the Resource-specific Carve Out (ReCO). It would start with a subsidized generation resource exiting the capacity market with a corresponding amount of load rather than the FRR’s inverse of a designated amount of load exiting the capacity market with a corresponding resource. (See PJM Unveils Capacity Proposal.)

On Aug. 29, the commission issued a procedural order granting itself more time to consider motions requesting rehearing of its order recommending the capacity market changes (EL16-49, et al.).

— Rory D. Sweeney