By Suzanne Herel

FERC last week upheld its Nov. 28 order accepting PJM’s changes to its capacity auction demand curve and related parameters, denying rehearing requests by a broad group of interests (ER14-2940).

PJM said the changes to the variable resource requirement (VRR) curve and related pricing inputs, including the cost of new entry (CONE), were identified in the RTO’s triennial review as being necessary to meet evolving market conditions.

The new, more conservative curve results in the procurement of more capacity and carries an estimated 1% cost increase (about $216 million).

PJM uses the curve to gauge how much capacity it needs to meet the one-in-10-year loss-of-load standard. A lower-cost VRR curve identified by The Brattle Group, the independent consultant that conducted the study, would fail to meet the needs of a one-in-five-year event 13% of the time, PJM said.

In the November order, the commission agreed with PJM that the changes to the VRR curve were needed to ensure reliability “in light of evolving market conditions and anticipated supply shifts,” including the planned retirement of 26,000 MW of coal-fired generation. The order accepted the explanation of PJM’s expert witness, economist Paul M. Sotkiewicz, who argued that, due to the anticipated changes, PJM’s prior modeling assumptions were no longer appropriate.

A coalition comprised of the Maryland Public Service Commission, the New Jersey Board of Utilities and PJM load-serving entities challenged PJM’s assessment of evolving market conditions, saying that most of the coal retirements have already occurred and that the region has added 17,000 MW of natural gas-fired capacity in the last three years.

The commission rejected the challenge, saying that its acceptance of the new VRR curve “was not based on the specific timing of these retirements, but on the inability of PJM’s prior modeling construct to capture these evolving conditions and thus on the resulting need for a more conservative VRR curve.”

The PJM Power Providers Group (P3) and Public Service Enterprise Group disputed PJM’s use of an 8% cost of capital used in CONE calculations, saying it was too low because it relied on corporate-level data for publicly traded independent power producers and did not reflect riskier, project-level financing. (See PJM Generators Seek Support for Capital Boost.)

The commission said that in addition to IPP data, it also relied on market- and transaction-based cost of capital data.

“This evidence was verifiable and reflects the market’s required compensation for the specific, systemic operating risks attributable to merchant generation, and the willingness of borrowers to bear these risks,” the commission said.