By Amanda Durish Cook

FERC last week rejected Big Rivers Electric’s request for a waiver to keep MISO interconnection rights for one of its coal plants through late 2017.

Big Rivers was seeking to keep its Coleman Station in Kentucky interconnected to MISO’s grid for an additional year after the RTO ended a three-year system support resource agreement for the 433-MW coal plant in September. After that, the company said it would file another interconnection termination waiver request in August 2017 while it decides whether to restart the plant with environmental upgrades or convert it to natural gas. Big Rivers also said it was waiting on a MISO compliance filing regarding the retention and transfer of interconnection rights of a retiring SSR. (See FERC OKs Change to MISO SSR Process.)

FERC denied the request on the grounds that projects in MISO’s interconnection queue could be impacted by the waiver and Big Rivers’ stated intent to file a waiver extension would mean the requested waiver would not be limited in scope.

“Because MISO indicates that at least one project in its interconnection queue could be affected by granting this waiver request, we cannot conclude that granting Big Rivers’ request would have no undesirable consequences,” FERC said in its Feb. 3 order (EL17-15).

The commission said Big Rivers’ indecision on whether to restart Coleman “directly contradicts” its claim that it has taken “significant steps” to restore the plant to commercial operation soon. FERC also pointed out that an interconnection rights transfer would not apply to Coleman because it exhausted the maximum 36 months of suspension/SSR designation that MISO allows in a five-year period and could no longer sit idle and stay connected.

Big Rivers had argued that terminating Coleman’s interconnection service would harm regional reliability and increase costs for its members. The cooperative said it spent $6.5 million in 2014 to idle Coleman and spends $2.8 million every year to preserve the plant. FERC said Big Rivers’ expenses are merely to maintain the coal station’s “existing state” and not enough to return it to commercial operation, as the plant would violate EPA’s Mercury Air Toxics Standards and need environmental improvements.

Finally, FERC brushed aside Big Rivers’ arguments that terminating interconnection service would run counter to language in MISO’s generation interconnection agreement. FERC pointed out that Big Rivers never had a generator interconnection agreement with MISO.