By William Opalka

The New England Power Pool Participants Committee urged federal regulators last week not to short circuit its stakeholder process in ordering zonal sloped demand curves for the next Forward Capacity Auction.

NEPOOL joined ISO-NE in asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to reject a request by generators to force the RTO to develop a zonal sloped demand curve design for FCA 10 in February (ER14-1639).

The New England Power Generators Association made the request June 22 after ISO-NE backed off from its commitment to introduce a new curve for FCA 10, saying that making a change now would create reliability concerns. The generators asked FERC to reiterate a previous order that directed the RTO to continue efforts to eliminate administrative pricing in zones that are short of generation resources or suffer from transmission constraints. (See NEPGA: Order Sloped Demand Curve in FCA 10.)

ISO-NE withdrew its support for the change just before NEPOOL was scheduled to vote on it. At NEPOOL’s June Planning Committee meeting, only 42% of stakeholders backed the sloped curve.

NEPOOL told FERC that although some of its members feel “frustration” with ISO-NE for reversing course despite “substantial progress,” it wants any changes to result from the stakeholder process.

“NEPOOL takes no position under these circumstances on whether an order to implement sloped zonal demand curves generally is appropriate or justified,” it wrote. NEPOOL’s preference is to develop consensus in its own stakeholder process for “many interrelated issues,” it said.

The Electric Power Supply Association also weighed in on the issue last week, expressing support for NEPGA and chastising the RTO for its reversal. “EPSA does not believe that the commission intended the ISO-NE to receive a free pass on this issue,” it wrote.

In its reply to NEPGA, filed July 2, ISO-NE said the generators’ motion should be dismissed on procedural and substantive grounds.

“NEPGA’s proposed zonal demand curve design using potential FCA 10 capacity zone boundaries shows dramatically worse performance,” it said.

NEPGA had asked for a Section 206 proceeding, but the RTO said “it falls far short of what is required under the commission’s rules to initiate a proceeding.”