By Julie Gromer

FERC is considering changes to its Electric Quarterly Report (EQR) rules, including requiring data on ancillary services transactions and changes to how financially settled trades are reported.

In its Sept. 22 notice of the proposed changes, the commission said it will accept comments on the proposals for 60 days following their publication in the Federal Register (RM01-8, RM10-12, RM12-3 and ER02-2001).

Ancillary Services

Transmission providers currently report ancillary services such as reactive supply and regulation in the EQR’s Contract Data section. FERC is proposing that transmission providers also report information about transactions made under their ancillary services agreements in the EQR’s Transaction Data section.

FERC said the information will “help the commission, the public and the industry determine the actual rates being charged for service under these agreements [and] increase price transparency into the wholesale ancillary services markets.”

Booked Out Transactions

The commission also is seeking to clarify the reporting of “booked out” trades — those settled financially without any transmission of power.

FERC said EQR submissions relating to book outs frequently contain inconsistent or inaccurate information, making it difficult to determine how much power is being traded compared to how much is actually being delivered.

“We find that, based on the current EQR database configuration, it is not possible to differentiate book outs of energy or capacity because EQR filers do not have the option to distinguish between the two products,” FERC wrote.

To create a distinction, FERC proposed amending its data dictionary to replace “booked out power” with the product names “booked out energy” and “booked out capacity.”

FERC also seeks to clarify that booked out transactions must be reported in the EQR regardless of the number of parties involved. The notice provides examples of how booked out transactions should be reported when:

• two companies sell physical energy to each other for the same delivery period;
• one company sells energy to another company and, in real time, the company buying the energy signals the seller to reduce the amount of energy it is providing; and
• at least three companies are in a chain of energy sales and one company appears twice in that chain.

Tariffs and Time Zones

FERC also proposed that filers submit into the EQR’s tariff reference fields tariff-related information that they currently submit in the e-Tariff system and that they include time zone information for transmission capacity reassignment transactions.