By Suzanne Herel

FERC last week again rebuffed American Transmission Systems Inc.’s bid to recover the costs of its switch from MISO to PJM.

The commission denied ATSI’s request to rehear two 2011 orders in which it ruled that the company was not entitled to recover exit fees and legacy transmission costs that it incurred because it had not shown that the benefits of its move justified the costs (ER11-2814, ER11-3279).

ATSI, which joined MISO in October 2003, won FERC approval to move to PJM in December 2009.

The commission said that a decision to join an RTO for the first time may involve different motivations than a decision to switch RTOs later.

“The RTO realignment was a voluntary decision by ATSI to change from one RTO to another. While ATSI is correct that the commission has permitted transmission owners to recover the costs of joining an RTO, the commission has permitted such recovery because joining an RTO provides benefits to the transmission owner’s customers through more efficient dispatch of generation as well as more efficient utilization of the larger transmission system,” FERC said.

“The choice to change RTOs does not necessarily provide comparable benefits to the customers because they already enjoy these efficiency benefits in the RTO to which they belong. Moreover, transmission owners may choose to change RTOs based on factors unrelated to customer benefits, such as the benefits to their affiliated generation from differing market rules used by the RTOs,” it added.