By Rich Heidorn Jr.

FERC rejected Dominion Resources’ request to recover almost $400,000 in uncompensated costs incurred when it ran four dual-fuel units on fuel oil rather than cheaper natural gas in June.

The commission’s Nov. 30 order said Dominion’s Virginia Electric and Power Co. is not entitled to recover the additional costs because it only submitted to PJM cost-based offers for natural gas operations at its five combustion turbines in Ladysmith, Va. (EL16-109).

The units, totaling 783 MW, primarily operate with natural gas but can also run on fuel oil. They did not clear in the day-ahead market for June 25, and after the rebidding period, VEPCO learned of a pipeline constraint that left the Ladysmith units unable to operate on natural gas.

At 11 a.m. on June 25, PJM ordered the utility to operate four of the units beginning at noon for reliability reasons. The company said it notified PJM of its need to operate on more expensive fuel oil and PJM reiterated its dispatch order. VEPCO said it operated three units for 10 hours and one for 11 hours, spending $387,588 more on fuel than it was paid for.

The company said the commission’s June 2015 ruling that PJM’s Tariff and Operating Agreement were unjust and unreasonable because they did not permit day-ahead offers that vary by hour or allow market sellers to update their offers in real time supported its request for relief. (See Duke, ODEC Denied ‘Stranded’ Gas Compensation.)

The commission disagreed, saying the company’s “inability to recover its fuel oil costs for the Ladysmith units resulted from its own business decisions regarding which cost-based offers to submit and is not the result of the offer limitations that the commission addressed in the offer flexibility proceeding.”

FERC also rejected the company’s request to make it whole through a waiver of PJM’s rules, saying it would cause harm to load, which “would be assessed unanticipated additional charges inconsistent with the current PJM Tariff and Operating Agreement on file and without adequate prior notice.”

“Granting waiver here would send the wrong signal to market sellers, namely, that a resource can submit an offer that PJM uses to dispatch the resource, and then seek to increase that offer after-the-fact to receive additional compensation,” FERC said.

PJM’s proposed Tariff revisions to increase offer flexibility, filed in August, is pending before the commission (ER16-372-002).