FERC on Thursday modified its discussion of a previous order rejecting Invenergy’s request to waive SPP’s financial security posting requirements, denying a rehearing request by operation of law.
The commission said in a letter order that it continued to find Invenergy’s waiver request does not address a concrete problem, as required under FERC’s four-part waiver criteria (ER21-2807).
Invenergy Wind Development and Invenergy Solar Development asked for the rehearing after the commission in December found that developer did not demonstrate that its potential loss of posted financial security “is a concrete problem that warrants waiver.” (See FERC Splits on Waivers from SPP IC Process).
The renewable developer said it had eight interconnection requests pending in the same SPP queue cluster as another developer. It alleged that the RTO said the study would need to be redone because requests higher in the queue were withdrawn from an earlier cluster. Invenergy said a discussion with SPP staff about the upgrades and assigned cost allocations left its questions unresolved.
Invenergy said that, faced with the choice of withdrawing its requests or posting a third financial security to preserve its option to stay in the queue and avoid losing previously paid security amounts, it chose to post security under protest for three of its eight projects.
FERC said Invenergy’s waiver request would address the potential to lose its posted financial security if it were to withdraw from the queue with a corresponding impact on the cost and timing of the remaining and lower queued interconnection customers.
“We continue to find that this potential loss is not a concrete problem that warrants waiver of the tariff as Invenergy has not been confronted with forfeiture of its financial security at this time,” the commission said.
Commissioner Mark Christie, who dissented from the previous order, concurred this time, saying it “represents the least bad alternative at this time.”
“It is undeniable that the commission’s ‘case-by-case’ implementation of its waiver policy has allowed it to, in this instance, provide undue preference for one interconnection customer over another without adequate justification,” Christie said. “Here, however, my colleagues have taken advantage of this discretion to reach outcomes that are both arbitrary and unduly discriminatory, and in doing so have undermined whatever value remained of the commission’s four-pronged waiver ‘test.’
“I hope going forward, we can reexamine the commission’s waiver policies to provide clear guidance that can be consistently and fairly applied going forward,” he said.
