FERC on Friday accepted ISO-NE‘s informational filing for its upcoming capacity auction, turning down petitions by two companies to adjust their offers and taking the opportunity to once again call for elimination of the RTO’s Minimum Offer Price Rule (MOPR).
FERC’s order ahead of the Feb. 7 auction rejected a protest by Borrego for its Wendell Energy Storage Project (ER22-391). The solar and storage company argued that its offer floor price should be adjusted to account for a battery storage investment tax credit (ITC) that could be included in the Biden administration’s Build Back Better Act. FERC denied the request because the bill has not become law.
The commission also turned down a protest from Anbaric and Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company (MMWEC) over their Westover Energy Storage Center. They argued that ISO-NE’s Internal Market Monitor inappropriately mitigated their proposed offer floor price to the offer review trigger price (ORTP) for storage.
Another Push on the MOPR
FERC Chairman Richard Glick and Commissioner Allison Clements wrote a separate concurrence to once again urge ISO-NE to remove its MOPR.
The two have been pushing both New England and PJM to get rid of the rules, which they say are uncompetitive and prop up incumbent generators.
The rule in New England, they wrote, makes the RTO’s existing tariff unjust and unreasonable. They argue that the MOPR is overly broad and goes beyond preventing market-side buyer power and into punishing legitimately low capacity offers.
The FERC commissioners deferred to ISO-NE’s process for replacing the MOPR.
“We think it prudent to give the ISO an opportunity to replace the existing MOPR with a solution of its choosing. After all, under the FPA, one size need not fit all and different regions of the country may choose different approaches to addressing the problem of actual buyer side market power,” they wrote.
But they urged ISO-NE to move “expeditiously.”
A proposal to eliminate the MOPR is moving through the NEPOOL stakeholder process and is up for a vote at the Participants Committee next week. (See NEPOOL MC Approves ISO-NE Plan to Eliminate MOPR.)