By Michael Kuser

FERC on Friday rejected a bid by New England transmission owners to increase their returns on equity to the levels enjoyed before they were lowered by a 2014 commission order that was vacated by an appellate court earlier this year.

The commission said it would address the actual rate in a later remand order (ER15-414, EL11-66).

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in April that the commission had “failed to provide any reasoned basis” for setting the base ROE for a group of New England TOs at 10.57%, adding that the commission failed to meet its burden of proof in declaring the existing 11.14% rate unjust and unreasonable. (See Court Rejects FERC ROE Order for New England.)

Led by Emera Maine, the TOs requested reinstatement of their previously allowed ROEs in June. Other parties included Central Maine Power, Eversource Energy, National Grid and Avangrid subsidiary United Illuminating.

The TOs claimed that the court’s decision “automatically” restored the parties to the rate in effect prior to the vacated Opinion No. 531. Because the commission lacked a quorum at the time of the filing, the TOs asked to begin collecting at the higher rate 60 days after the commission regained a quorum, which it did on Aug. 9, when new Chairman Neil Chatterjee and Commissioner Robert Powelson joined the commission. (See Quorum Restored, FERC Holds First Open Meeting Since January.)

To reduce the administrative burden on the commission, the TOs said they would leave the question of surcharges for the period before the court’s decision until FERC issued a remand order for Emera.

The commission disagreed that the D.C. Circuit decision returned TOs to their previous ROEs: “As the Supreme Court explained in Burlington Northern Inc. v. United States, which involved the substantively similar provisions of the Interstate Commerce Act, a ‘federal court[’s] authority to reject … rate orders for whatever reason extends to the orders alone, and not to the rates themselves.’”

The commission concluded that leaving the current ROEs in place would not make the TOs any worse off following a remand order for Emera because, on remand, the commission will exercise its “broad remedial authority” to make whatever ROE the commission determines to be just and reasonable effective for the refund period and the entire period.”

In addition, the order said an immediate return to the previously allowed ROEs would “significantly complicate the process of implementing the commission’s order on remand.”

In 2014, FERC determined that a discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis of a proxy group of companies comparable to TOs produced a zone of reasonableness of 7.04 to 11.74%. The commission also concluded that TOs’ new just and reasonable ROE should be set at the upper midpoint of the zone of reasonableness — i.e., halfway between the midpoint and the top of the zone of reasonableness.

The D.C. Circuit ruled that the commission had not adequately shown that the existing ROE was unjust and unreasonable. The court explained that the Federal Power Act’s statutory “zone of reasonableness creates a broad range of potentially lawful ROEs rather than a single just and reasonable ROE.”