By Suzanne Herel

WILMINGTON, Del. — The PJM Markets and Reliability Committee on Thursday tabled voting until next month on a proposal to tighten rules on lost opportunity costs for combustion turbines.

PJM and Independent Market Monitor Joe Bowring supported the change, saying that current rules provide incentives for units to offer and clear in the day-ahead market but not in the real-time market.

Under the proposal, units with start-up and notification times of no more than two hours and minimum run-times of two hours would be paid lost opportunity costs if they are not dispatched. Resources with real-time startup and notification times or minimum run-times of more than two hours will not receive lost opportunity payments unless PJM bars them from running in real time to avoid transmission overloads.

PJM would use the generator’s energy schedule to calculate opportunity costs except for self-scheduled units, for which the higher of the available cost- or price-based curves would apply.

“The two-hour start notification and two-hour minimum run are designed to be aligned with what the dispatch operators can see,” said Stu Bresler, PJM vice president of market operations.

Bowring called the proposal “clearly an improvement.”

But Ed Tatum of Old Dominion Electric Cooperative raised an objection to limiting LOC compensation to units with minimum run times of two hours or less, saying it was too restrictive.

Susan Bruce of the PJM Industrial Customers Coalition said dropping the restriction would be “cherry picking” on a compromise that stakeholders agreed to at the Energy Market Uplift Senior Task Force, where the proposal won 84% support last month.

With two objections and one abstention, the MRC decided to send the issue back to the task force for additional discussions at its meeting tomorrow. The MRC will vote on the current proposal at its April meeting, considering any friendly amendments or alternate motions developed at the task force meeting.

Separately, members approved a proposal that was unanimously approved by the task force, instructing the Planning Committee to treat uplift as an input to analyses under the Regional Transmission Expansion Plan.