Members endorsed rules describing when economic demand response is eligible for compensation, over the objections of some demand response providers, who said they are unfair.

The changes to Manual 11: Energy & Ancillary Services Market Operations specify that economic DR will be compensated at full Locational Marginal Pricing for “demand reductions that are executed in response to the real‐time and/or day‐ahead LMP or as dispatched by PJM and that are not implemented as part of normal operations.”

Excluded will be “load reductions from normal operations that would have occurred without PJM dispatch, or that would have occurred absent PJM energy market compensation.”

The changes, meant to clarify rules that took effect in April 2012 to comply with FERC Order 745, won 110 votes in support with 22 no votes and 18 abstentions.

Pete Langbein, of PJM, explained that some electricity customers manage their resources in a sophisticated manner that can lead to inflated settlement costs.

“This is just consistent with the way we’re interpreting the Tariff now,” Langbein said. “This is not crafted to have some mysterious meaning behind it.”

One representative said his clients oppose “PJM speculating” about DR participants’ intent.

Frank Lacey, of curtailment service provider Comverge, set up a hypothetical situation in which a retailer dims its lights or turns off escalators in response to day-ahead pricing. “If that was done for the last 10 years, now that can’t be offered into the energy market as a load reduction” under PJM’s interpretation, he said.

John Webster, of Icetec Energy Services, said the change “introduces a lack of transparency.” He said the new language could be “discriminatory based on the level of [customer] sophistication.”

Despite the reservations, stakeholders endorsed the Manual changes with 83 percent support. It will go to the MRC for consideration later this month.