FERC last week granted Rochester, Minn., a waiver of its Standards of Conduct, finding that the city qualifies as a small public utility.

The commission’s Nov. 17 ruling said the waiver will remain in effect “unless and until the commission takes action on a complaint by an entity that Rochester has unfairly used its access to information to unfairly benefit itself or its affiliates” (TS15-3).

The southeastern Minnesota city sought the waiver in September 2015, claiming it met the definition of a non-jurisdictional utility. Jurisdictional transmission providers are subject to the Standards of Conduct, which require transmission function and marketing function employees to operate independently of each other and prohibit sharing nonpublic transmission information with marketing employees.

Without a waiver, Rochester said it would indirectly be subjected to the standards based on the commission’s reciprocity rules, which ensure nonpublic utilities’ access to transmission service from public utilities. The city pointed out it transferred operational control of its transmission to MISO in late 2014; the waiver requires that utilities own, operate or control “only limited and discrete transmission facilities.”

Rochester’s municipal utility serves about 50,000 customers, mostly with power purchased from the Southern Minnesota Municipal Power Agency. It owns and operates about 86 MW of generation, 42 miles of transmission and 793 miles of distribution. Early this year, Rochester officials announced that the public utility would begin building a new 47-MW natural gas plant in 2017. The utility has proposed a 3.7% rate increase in 2017.

— Amanda Durish Cook