By Rory D. Sweeney
VALLEY FORGE, Pa. — It turns out overtime won’t resolve this jump ball.
During a September meeting of PJM’s Markets and Reliability Committee meeting, the RTO’s Brian Chmielewski announced that, while no proposal from the Incremental Auction Senior Task Force (IASTF) received the more than 50% approval needed to be moved for endorsement to the MRC, poll results showing that a majority of stakeholders wanted a change indicated a “jump ball” — and that compromise might be possible.
The task force is considering structural changes to the Incremental Auction process to eliminate significant clearing price differences between a delivery year’s capacity auction and its three subsequent IAs.
But at the IASTF’s meeting last week, Chmielewski revealed similar results from a vote taken in November, despite two additional months of meetings and negotiation. PJM’s proposal, known as Proposal A”, was seven votes short of receiving the support needed to move on to the MRC.
The result wasn’t altogether unexpected, as Chmielewski’s early hope for compromise quickly faded at subsequent meetings. (See PJM Members Still Split on Incremental Auctions.)
“I think we’ve kind of come full circle,” he said.
He later confirmed that Proposal A” would nonetheless be presented for a first read at the MRC meeting on Thursday.
While the overall results were similar, Chmielewski noted that there were less total votes the second time around. Exelon’s Sharon Midgley wondered if holding the vote shortly before the Thanksgiving holiday accounted for the voter apathy.
“As a whole, the group has done a lot of compromising,” she said.
The IASTF was also tasked with investigating concerns about market distortion stemming from market participants using replacement capacity to take advantage of the clearing price differences, but stakeholders decided to hold off on that issue until the MRC has decided on the Proposal A” structural changes.
“I would certainly support putting the replacement discussion in abeyance until we see the outcome,” said Carl Johnson, who represents the PJM Public Power Coalition.
“I’m happy to revisit that conversation once that path is clear,” agreed NRG Energy’s Neal Fitch.
Fitch also asked when stakeholders could expect the Independent Market Monitor’s promised update of its report on replacement capacity. An IMM staff member said it would be published shortly.
With those concerns in mind, stakeholders agreed to cancel the task force’s Dec. 18 meeting and instead reconvene at the next meeting scheduled for Jan. 19.