The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week rejected for a second time PPL Electric Utilities’ request to be relieved from its obligation to purchase the output of an 18-MW qualifying facility (QF) in Pennsylvania.

FERC’s Sept. 18 order reiterated its October 2013 ruling that PPL had failed to prove that a planned IPS Power Engineering cogeneration facility at a beef processing plant in Souderton, Pa., would be able to sell into PJM’s markets.

In 2009, FERC ruled that PPL would no longer have to purchase capacity and energy from QFs larger than 20 MW in PJM. The order established a rebuttable presumption that facilities below 20 MW did not have “nondiscriminatory” access to PJM’s wholesale markets.

The commission’s two Republican members expressed misgivings about the 2013 ruling, issuing a concurrence in which they said the commission’s standard for rebutting the presumption for QFs below 20 MW should not be unreasonably high. Since then, however, FERC has eliminated mandatory purchase requirements for two QFs below 20 MW, both owned by a larger company, GDF Suez Energy, which does participate in wholesale markets.

Last week’s ruling also rejected a request from the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission for clarification on how the qualifying facility mandatory purchase obligations should be applied in retail-choice states, such as Pennsylvania. The PUC sought guidance on how utilities such as PPL would comply with the obligations if they are not default suppliers and have no load to serve.

FERC dismissed the PUC’s questions as “largely broader issues beyond the scope of this proceeding.”