The NEPOOL Participants Committee on March 7 unanimously approved ISO-NE’s package of tariff revisions to comply with FERC Order 2023. 

ISO-NE expects to submit the compliance filing April 1, two days before the deadline set by FERC in its efforts to unclog interconnection queues that have bogged down nationwide. 

The vote follows months of deliberations that included a Feb. 15 NEPOOL Transmission Committee meeting at which an initial proposal, as well as six proposed amendments to it, failed to gain the two-thirds support needed for approval. (See ISO-NE Order 2023 Compliance Proposal Fails to Pass NEPOOL TC.) 

ISO-NE incorporated several elements of the amendments into the final package, which was approved with only two abstentions. 

The RTO summarized the post-Feb. 15 changes to the package in a March 1 memo to the committee: 

• • An interconnection customer may specify in its interconnection request for capacity network resource (CNR) interconnection service that the requested service be downgraded to network resource interconnection service under certain conditions. 
  • After the completion of a cluster study (not including the transitional cluster study), if the RTO determines that a cluster restudy is required (because of the withdrawal of other projects), the developer of a remaining project may request a specific one-time decrease in the size of the generating facility or elective transmission upgrade for the restudy. 

For customers with assigned queue positions as of 30 calendar days after April 1, but for which system impact studies are projected to be completed between May 1 and June 30, the RTO will still tender transitional cluster study agreements. However, if the SIS is complete and accepted by the customer by July 1, the request will no longer proceed to the transitional cluster study. Instead, the customer will be tendered an interconnection agreement pursuant to the applicable provisions in the respective interconnection procedures. 

• • Where a request successfully participates in the transitional CNR group study and then later obtains a capacity supply obligation in the Forward Capacity Market, the rules governing any termination of the CNR capability will be governed by the relevant FCM rules. 

“Importantly, each of these additions can be incorporated without adding to the overall time frames or decreasing the efficiency of the new process,” ISO-NE said. 

When FERC issued Order 2023 last July, the potential capacity of projects waiting in interconnection queues exceeded 2 TW, more than the amount of generation already online nationwide. It seeks to streamline the interconnection process for transmission providers, provide greater timing and cost certainty to interconnection customers and prevent discrimination against the wave of renewables being proposed nationwide. (See FERC Updates Interconnection Queue Process with Order 2023.)