By William Opalka

FERC on Thursday denied a merchant transmission owner’s request for rehearing of a 2013 order that denied its complaint that NYISO improperly implemented its buyer-side market power mitigation exemption test. However, the commission granted a limited clarification and directed NYISO to make an additional compliance filing (EL12-98).

Hudson Transmission Partners filed the complaint against NYISO after the exemption test was employed for the developer’s 660-MW HVDC merchant transmission line between Ridgefield, N.J., and New York City, which went into service in 2013. The developer had argued that the NYISO Tariff defining “generator” did not apply to its “controllable line.”

“The commission addressed HTP’s argument in the November 2013 order and found that the NYISO Tariff’s references to generators are intended to include controllable lines,” FERC wrote, also citing commission precedent.

FERC also clarified whether a holder of unused unforced deliverability rights (UDRs) has the ability to retain or sell them. The NYISO Tariff permits a UDR holder to either use the rights to offer generation from outside the NYISO footprint into the NYISO installed capacity auctions, or to return its UDRs to NYISO for a given year.

“We agree with HTP that retention of such unused rights in this circumstance, i.e., when the offered ICAP does not clear, does not constitute market manipulation without additional showings under the commission’s anti-manipulation rule,” FERC wrote.

The order said that NYISO fulfilled its compliance requirements to provide the specific scaling factor used for the HTP Project. But it required an additional filing “reflecting Tariff provisions that provide the conceptual basis and general framework for a scaling factor and that are sufficiently broad and flexible to allow for the kinds of variations that exist with respect to UDR projects.”