VALLEY FORGE, Pa. — DC Energy’s Bruce Bleiweis appears to face an uphill fight in his effort to win a rule change to mask the ownership of financial transmission rights.
Bleiweis’ problem statement won 61% support in a roll call vote of the Market Implementation Committee last week following protests from some members and the Independent Market Monitor.
Most problem statements are approved by acclamation, but members made clear there were too many differing opinions for such an endorsement in this case. Bleiweis would need to boost his support to a sector-weighted two-thirds majority to win approval at PJM’s senior committees.
Currently, all RTOs publish the identities of FTR holders when posting auction results. However, PJM does not disclose the ownership of other products, according to Bleiweis. (See “PJM Asked to Consider Masking FTR Ownership” in PJM Market Implementation Committee Briefs.) ISO-NE has begun a process by which it will post FTR market data only in the aggregate, according to the problem statement.
“We think this is a terrible idea,” said Market Monitor Joe Bowring, noting, as other speakers did, that members at the same time are being asked to consider relaxing some rules around data confidentiality. (See “Conversation Continues on Relaxing Confidentiality Rules,” below.)
“Reducing transparency at a time we’re talking about increasing transparency is a bad idea,” he said.
Carl Johnson, representing the PJM Public Power Coalition, concurred. “We would not support this as a one-off proposition,” he said. “It goes against transparency.”
Steve Lieberman of Old Dominion Electric Cooperative agreed. “From where I sit, it’s bad timing,” he said. “We just don’t view this as a problem.”
Bleiweis said the ownership disclosure was a problem because it allowed people to analyze companies’ positions, which can lead to unfair market advantages.
“We’ve spent 10 years advocating for more transparency. At this point, we just want parity because we haven’t gotten any sense that membership will move toward more transparency with other products,” he said. “We just want to be treated like everybody else.”
The initiative was assigned to the MIC. The work is expected to take three to five months.
Conversation Continues on Relaxing Confidentiality Rules
Members weighed in with their concerns in a discussion over proposed manual changes that would relax PJM’s data confidentiality rules.
The Markets and Reliability Committee approved a problem statement and issue charge on the subject in July. (See PJM Considering Release of Uplift, Outage Data.)
Under the proposed changes, PJM would be permitted to release data in six areas:
- Concluded individual generation outages, if it was determined to be relevant to an event on the grid, such as severe weather;
- Demand response reply available in localized areas;
- The identities — but not the offers — of resources committed in capacity market auctions;
- Uplift payments in an area no smaller than a transmission zone, for a time period no shorter than a single operating day;
- Aggregated statistics related to the execution and results of the Three Pivotal Supplier test, an addition requested by the Monitor; and
- Information already in the public domain.
Some members worried that details about generation outages during a severe weather event might allow competitors to calculate non-performance charges under the new Capacity Performance product. Others suggested that data in the public domain be restricted to information released by the affected company in order to ensure its accuracy. PJM also was asked to provide clarity regarding whom it would release such information to.
Changes Coming to Settlement Process?
PJM is considering changing rules governing how electric distribution companies correct settlement errors.
The Settlement C process allows EDCs to correct significant errors 60 days after an initial settlement is performed, but its efficacy is limited by a requirement that all affected parties must consent to the resettlement.
PJM introduced a problem statement and issue charge that would ask the Market Settlements Subcommittee to determine whether changes need to be made to the process.
The issue was brought to PJM’s attention by Dayton Power and Light, Direct Energy and Pepco Holdings Inc.
Implementation of any accepted proposals is expected by the third quarter of 2016.
Tier 1 Compensation Manual, Tariff Changes Delayed
The MIC deferred until its next meeting consideration of manual and Tariff changes designed to reflect a Tier 1 compensation proposal that members approved in July. The delay was requested by Dave Pratzon of GT Power Group.
Enhanced Security Updates in the Works
PJM is updating its security rules for accessing the RTO’s website, with changes to password length, security questions and timeout restrictions. Customer account managers and users will be able to start creating system accounts Sept. 15. The changes are expected to be complete in the second quarter of 2016.
— Suzanne Herel