FERC on Tuesday ordered Avangrid (NYSE:AGR) and NextEra Energy (NYSE:NEE) to submit additional briefs in their ongoing dispute over the New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC) transmission line project, which would bring 1,200 MW of Canadian hydropower through Maine to Massachusetts (EL21-6, EL21-94).

The commission also opened a proceeding to determine if specific provisions of ISO-NE’s tariff are unjust and unreasonable in relation to the RTO’s classification of a circuit breaker at NextEra’s Seabrook Nuclear Station in New Hampshire.

Avangrid alleges that NextEra “is attempting to block, delay or add unreasonable costs to the interconnection” of the NECEC project and argues that the ISO-NE tariff requires Seabrook to accommodate the project’s interconnection and “act in good faith” by upgrading a circuit breaker. Avangrid contends that NextEra has made it clear that it will not replace the breaker unless ordered to do so by FERC.

NextEra argues that Avangrid assumes that the Seabrook breaker is a transmission facility when in fact it is part of the generating facility. The breaker does not transmit energy and therefore not under the ISO-NE tariff provisions cited by Avangrid, which apply to network upgrades, NextEra says.

ISO-NE did not formally intervene in the proceeding but submitted a letter to the commission urging “expeditious” action to resolve the matter. FERC, in turn, wants the RTO to submit briefs on whether Seabrook’s breaker is correctly identified as a part of a generating facility.

Danly Dissents

Republican Commissioner James Danly dissented, saying that while his fellow commissioners cite the development of transmission projects as a priority, they have allowed this matter “to languish for nearly a year and have yet to issue an order on the merits.”

Danly said such a delay is “unacceptable.”

“Instead, the commission has waited four more months until today, 11 months after NextEra Seabrook filed its petition, to issue this order,” Danly wrote. “And even now, the commission is not ruling on either NextEra Seabrook’s petition or Avangrid’s complaint.”

Danly said the additional briefings to address whether NextEra Seabrook is obligated to complete the upgrade at its own expense under the terms of its interconnection agreement with ISO-NE, which was not previously raised, is not justified.

“The commission invites briefing on matters that it should be able to resolve wholly on the basis of the agreements between the parties, the ISO-NE tariff and commission precedent,” Danly said. The additional briefings have “all but guaranteed that the generation breaker upgrades will be delayed for at least a year and a half.”