PJM on Friday issued its first official responses to an onslaught of complaints at FERC from generators over Capacity Performance charges during the cold snap over the holidays, arguing that they knew what risks they were facing when they took capacity payments.

The winter storm led to many nonperformance charges Dec. 23 and 24, which have led to 12 separate complaints filed at FERC. PJM responded to seven of those Friday.

The storm, also known as “Elliott,” led to outages in neighboring grids and nearly did in PJM, though its operators were able to keep the lights on despite the nonperformance of many generators.

“These failures could have had life-and-death consequences had events played out differently,” the RTO said. “As it was, PJM operators preserved reliability while contending with unprecedented difficulties and uncertainties that were exacerbated by complainants’ nonperformance. In short, the lights stayed on despite extremely stressed conditions brought about by capacity resources failing to meet their obligations.”

PJM filed responses Friday to the “Nautilus Entities” (EL23-53); generators in the ComEd zone (EL23-54); a coalition of capacity resources including Competitive Power Ventures and Talen Energy (EL23-55); Lee County Generating Station (EL23-57); Sun Energy (EL23-58); Lincoln Generating Station (EL23-59); and Parkway Generation Keys (EL23-60), though comments came in to all 12 dockets.

The only ways generators can avoid nonperformance charges during emergency events are if they are on a planned outage approved by PJM or the RTO did not schedule them. CP holds resources with restrictive operating limits to the same standards as those without them. Natural gas generators are responsible for procuring natural gas deliveries despite pipeline outages.

“Capacity market sellers should assume that their resources will be needed, at a minimum, any time the PJM region is under a declared emergency for capacity shortages,” PJM said. “If capacity market sellers need to purchase natural gas and self-schedule to ensure that their capacity resources can be available when needed, then sellers of gas-fueled capacity resources should engage in such forward-looking behavior.”

PJM argued that the generators’ failure to perform cannot be excused by claiming the grid operator’s actions were invalid, by asserting there was no emergency or by arguing that their performance was not actually needed to address that emergency.

“Complainants urge the commission to become the Monday morning quarterback and super-operator of the grid, which are both roles the commission has been careful to avoid in the past,” PJM said. “The regulatory process will rapidly unwind with perpetual litigation, and reliability will be undermined, should the commission choose to disregard the real-time flexibility regional transmission organizations must have to manage emergencies and to substitute its judgment with the luxury of perfect hindsight.”

Some of the complaints criticized PJM for helping neighbors that were shedding load; siding with those arguments would chill cooperation between neighboring systems in future emergencies, the RTO argued.

The group of generators in ComEd’s territory argued that their islanded section of PJM lacked any real emergency, but the RTO said they do not get to determine when emergencies exist. PJM declares emergencies, and the 6,110 MW of generation in northern Illinois the generators failed to provide represents 21.5% of the reserves it was relying on during the storm, it said.

“PJM recognizes that there remain valid issues associated with the lack of synchronization between the natural gas nomination cycles and the real-time nature of electric system dispatch,” the RTO said. “This lack of synchronization is not new and existed at the time these unit owners submitted their bids into the capacity Base Residual Auction.”

One of the recommendations from FERC and NERC’s joint report on the February 2021 winter storm that knocked out power in Texas and surrounding states was to improve electric-gas coordination. The North American Energy Standards Board has been assigned that work.

Concerns over electric-gas coordination are national in scope, and FERC should not try to resolve them via proceedings on one winter reliability event in the Eastern Interconnection, PJM said.

Other Parties Weigh In

Sierra Club filed a response to several of the complaints, noting that they arose from the first application of the CP rules, which are also the subject of stakeholder proceedings looking into future changes. The organization said it is important to remember that a central objective of the rules was to get generators to change their behavior and investment decisions in ways that would improve reliability.

“Taking on a capacity obligation in PJM — in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue — is not and should not be a risk-free enterprise,” Sierra said. “For the Capacity Performance system to work, suppliers must be held to the rules they agreed to when taking on and accepting payments for capacity obligations.”

Sierra had some sympathy with one of the complainants: SunEnergy1, a solar farm that wants relief going forward to excuse solar from the risk of nonperformance when the resource has little availability — and is paid less to reflect that. But natural gas generators should not be excused from the penalties because of “the inflexible gas supply arrangements” they prefer to make.

“Where penalties cannot drive better performance, a resource’s nonperformance should not incur penalties,” Sierra said. “In contrast, penalties should apply where resources can take steps to improve performance, such as weatherizing equipment or procuring gas in order to fulfil their capacity obligations — as the commission concluded after considerable discussion back in 2015.”

Constellation Energy Generation argued that FERC should dismiss the complaints because customers in PJM pay billions per year to ensure generator availability and the suppliers who failed to show up during Elliott knew what they were risking before the storm.

“PJM’s tariff is clear, unambiguous and strict: Penalties are mandatory when a CP resource fails to meet performance expectations during an emergency action declared by PJM,” Constellation said. “The exceptions are intentionally narrow.”

While generators face risks, they are allowed to include them in their capacity offers, along with the costs of investments to mitigate them. Generators also have the option to only participate in the energy market and avoid CP entirely.

“With full knowledge of the risks and obligations of accepting a capacity commitment, complainants bid into the capacity auction, received capacity commitments and cashed checks from ratepayers,” Constellation said. “But when their capacity was needed, they failed to deliver. Now they don’t want to pay the resulting penalties.”

Vistra told FERC that the markets performed as designed during Elliott, with some generators underperforming and others overperforming, while PJM maintained reliability.

“The complaints invite the commission to second-guess PJM’s operational decisions during emergency conditions and/or disrupt the market outcomes designed to flow from those decisions pursuant to the filed rate,” the company said. “Vistra respectfully submits that both invitations are perilous and, to maintain both the integrity of the market and the proper incentives needed for system reliability, the commission should view the complaints with skepticism.”

Even if FERC sides with the complaints, it should affirm the continued validity of the CP rules, Vistra said.