FERC on Thursday modified and upheld its July dismissal of a complaint by Hecate Energy that NYISO and Central Hudson Gas and Electric delayed the company’s 20-MW solar project in Greene County, N.Y., burdening it with $10 million in unnecessary system upgrade costs (EL21-49).

The commission said it continued to find Hecate has not met its burden under Section 206 of the Federal Power Act to show that the respondents violated the tariff or the FPA by failing to use reasonable efforts to process the project’s interconnection request.

“The reasonable efforts standard requires ‘efforts that are timely and consistent with Good Utility Practice and are otherwise substantially equivalent to those a party would use to protect its own interests.’ It does not require best or optimum efforts,” the commission said.

FERC in July dismissed the developer’s allegation that NYISO and the utility failed to use reasonable efforts in processing the interconnection request for the Greene County 3 project and violated the FPA by applying an “inclusion practice,” which was used to determine the firmness of an interconnecting project but is not delineated in the tariff regarding queue position. (See FERC Denies Solar Queue Complaint against NYISO, Central Hudson.)

In September, FERC denied Hecate’s request to rehear the order but said it would address the company’s concerns in a future order — the one issued Thursday.

“Hecate continues to downplay the various features that made the project atypical and contributed to the lengthier than typical study process,” the commission said in its latest order.

For example, FERC said Hecate asserted that the project has always been 20 MW. While that statement was true on Jan. 10, 2017, the date of the interconnection request that ultimately sparked the complaint, it does not portray the full picture the commission found. As NYISO explained, and Hecate corroborated, prior to Hecate’s submission of the project’s interconnection request, the company submitted an interconnection request for a 50-MW facility, which was subsequently withdrawn and split into three separate projects, one of which represents the original the project, the commission said.

The commission said it continued to find that the amount of time between the date the interconnection request and when respondents executed the facilities agreement was reasonable “given the complexities of the project.”

The commission also noted that Hecate’s request for relief was premature.

“As the project now will enter the subsequent Class Year, where it will be restudied, the possibility remains that the cost or amount of system upgrade facilities assigned to the project will change as the upgrade costs may be allocated to several projects,” the commission wrote.

Nor did FERC agree with Hecate’s contention that Central Hudson’s inclusion practice ”unfairly delayed its place in the queue.”

NYISO’s tariff “provides sufficient notice that transmission owners will update NYISO regarding facilities that should be included in the Base Case for NYISO’s studies of interconnection requests,” and the “‘rule of reason’ does not require the ‘inclusion practice’ to be explicitly set forth in the tariff,” the commission found.