By Rich Heidorn Jr.

WILMINGTON, Del. — PJM officials Thursday delayed a vote on manual changes for the Capacity Performance plan, sidestepping a potential confrontation with anxious stakeholders.

The agenda for Thursday’s Markets and Reliability Committee said PJM would seek endorsement of the Manual 18 changes, which run for more than 200 pages. But PJM officials delayed the vote — apparently chastened by a stormy stakeholder meeting the week before, which left some stakeholders complaining that the RTO had not thought through all the details before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the proposal June 9.

Stu Bresler, vice president of market operations, said PJM’s “current thinking” is to seek endorsement at the July 23 MRC meeting. There will be an additional meeting on the changes from 1 to 4 p.m. on July 15, following a training session from 1-4 p.m. on July 8.

“Technically speaking, we can put manual changes in place without a stakeholder vote,” Bresler said. But he said the RTO had traditionally sought stakeholder endorsement of the manuals, which spell out Tariff and Operating Agreement rules and procedures in detail.

In the meantime, PJM must make a compliance filing by July 9, said Dave Anders, director of stakeholder affairs and market services.

Rules Still Being Developed

Officials said they delayed the vote in part because they saw the need for additional changes beyond what they outlined during a testy, six-hour meeting June 18. (See PJM Stakeholders Rush to Figure out What’s Changing for the BRA.) “We will have some additional tweaks,” said Bresler.

PJM also agreed with Exelon’s proposal that a seller’s requested risk premium level can be “reasonably supported” rather than “documented and quantifiable” as it originally proposed.

“We do intend to add a little more language consistent with something Exelon offered [regarding] what we consider to be acceptable as far as risk,” said PJM attorney Jen Tribulski.

Ed Tatum of Old Dominion Electric Cooperative said after the June 18 session that RTO officials “seem to be making [the rules] up as they go along.” It was an observation that several other stakeholders told RTO Insider they agreed with — while conceding some uncertainty was unsurprising given the breadth of the changes.

Tatum on Thursday expressed gratitude for the additional time. “Our interest is that we have as few surprises as we possibly can,” he said.

American Electric Power’s Brock Ondayko also expressed frustration during Thursday’s meeting. “In response to many questions, PJM says, ‘We’ll have to go back to look at that.’”

Officials said they hoped the additional month would give them time to resolve all outstanding questions about the rules that will apply for the Base Residual Auction beginning Aug. 10.

Aggregation Rules

Bruce Campbell, of demand response provider EnergyConnect, said a discussion at a training session Wednesday on how resource providers can aggregate resources “left a lot of people confused, if not unhappy, with what PJM is proposing.”

“The language seems to say you can offer aggregation, but performance will be assessed based on individual resources,” Campbell said. “It seems inconsistent.”

“It seems to me we should be going back to some sort of stakeholder process to consider” alternative rules on issues such as aggregation, said consultant Tom Rutigliano of Achieving Equilibrium.

Fixed Resource Requirements

Marji Philips of Direct Energy questioned whether PJM had included a transition for fixed revenue requirement entities, asking whether the RTO was “concerned that FRR won’t be prepared.”

“It’s really not appropriate to debate the FERC order,” responded CEO-in-waiting Andy Ott. “… The scope of this meeting is compliance.”

Ott said he disagreed that FRRs won’t be prepared, saying their plans were already submitted for the transition years of 2018/19 and 2019/20.

Philips persisted: “We have the competitive market that’s meeting the reliability standard and the regulated part of PJM that’s not.”

FERC Order

The new rules, a response to the poor generator performance during the January 2014 polar vortex, increases reliability expectations of capacity resources with a new Capacity Performance product. It is intended to result in larger capacity payments for the most reliable resources and higher penalties for non-performers.

Although FERC rejected some of PJM’s related proposals for changes to the energy market, it otherwise approved the RTO’s changes with only limited modifications. (See FERC OKs PJM Capacity Performance: What You Need to Know.)