By Rich Heidorn Jr.
FERC last week proposed adopting the North American Energy Standards Board’s (NAESB) Standards for Business Practices and Communication Protocols for Public Utilities, which implement the commission’s requirements under the pro forma Open Access Transmission Tariff (RM05-5-027).
Version 003.2, approved by NAESB’s Wholesale Electric Quadrant, includes changes from WEQ Version 003.1, which were the subject of an earlier FERC Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that was never completed (RM05-5-025).
WEQ Version 003.2 also includes changes to make it consistent with NERC reliability standards regarding dynamic tagging and pseudo-ties, and the transition of NERC’s electric industry registry tool to NAESB.
The NOPR does not include NAESB’s WEQ-023 Modeling Business Practice Standards, which govern the calculation of available transfer capability for transmission, which is the subject of a separate rulemaking (RM05-5-025). It also has issued a separate NOPR proposing the retirement of the WEQ-006 Time Error Correction Business Practice Standards (RM05-5-026).
The commission also declined to incorporate into its regulations the Standards of Conduct for Electric Transmission Providers (WEQ-009); Contracts Related Standards (WEQ-010); and WEQ/WGQ eTariff Related Standards (WEQ-014).
NAESB’s voluntary standards become mandatory for FERC-regulated public utilities after they are incorporated into the commission’s regulations.
Redirects
FERC said it would not incorporate the preamble to WEQ 001-9 “because it leaves the implication that a transmission operator could adopt a ‘transmission provider-specific business practice’ that is at odds with the reason for establishing common business practices standards under the NAESB standards development process.”
The commission’s 2002 Dynegy decision set its policy on a customer’s right to keep the contractual rights to firm transmission service it had reserved while the customer’s request for a redirect was pending (EL01-104).
The commission said a transmission customer submitting a redirect request does not lose its rights to its original path until the redirect request is accepted by the transmission provider, confirmed by the transmission customer and passes the conditional reservation deadline under the transmission provider’s OATT.
In declining to adopt the preamble, the commission rejected arguments by the Edison Electric Institute, Public Utility District No. 1 of Snohomish County, Wash., and the city of Tacoma, Wash.’s Department of Public Utilities that the commission should allow redirects from a conditional parent reservation on a case-by-case basis, calling it “antithetical to the NAESB standards development process.”
