PJM’s frigid January was almost off the charts — literally.

The record-setting cold pushed PJM’s load-weighted LMP to $126.80, more than three times the price in January 2012, officials told stakeholders last week.

The RTO’s gross billings for the month were $11.2 billion — about one third of the total for all of 2013. Collateral calls for the month totaled $2.6 billion, more than six times the total for all of 2013. (See charts.)

PJM officials told the Members Committee that they are combing through data in preparation for an April 1 technical conference called by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Acting FERC Chair Cheryl LaFleur announced the conference Feb. 27, saying it would focus in part on the experience in PJM, which called on demand response, a voltage reduction and voluntary appeals for conservation to avoid rolling blackouts in the face of record demand and large numbers of generator outages.

Investigations Sought

Consumer advocates from the PJM states on Feb. 14 asked FERC to investigate the causes of the high prices.

“It is becoming apparent that the unprecedented energy and ancillary service prices that occurred in January were not reflective of smoothly operating market fundamentals, but were, instead, reflective of significant and systemic inefficiencies,” the advocates wrote. “For example, we know that more than 40,000 MW of generation was unavailable during critical periods in January due to forced outages. This is the same generation for which consumers in the PJM region are paying billions of dollars in capacity payments each year.”

The American Public Gas Association, which represents publicly owned local distribution companies, asked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Feb. 20 to examine the cause of a 10% jump in the February 2014 New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) Henry Hub contract.

The association said natural gas for February delivery jumped 52 cents to $5.557 per MMBtu, the highest closing price in more than three years, during the final hours of trading on Jan. 29.

While he said the association had no evidence of manipulation, APGA President Bert Kalisch said “We are more concerned about the pervasive pricing impact of NYMEX and want to be certain that the market is liquid and operating correctly.”

Gerald Ballinger, chairman of the group’s Gas Supply Committee, noted that most public gas companies purchase gas under contracts priced off of a price index.

Inside FERC’s Gas Market Report calculated the February price at Texas Gas Zone 1 based on a survey of 18 trades, 17 of which were basic transactions priced off of NYMEX, he said. The price rose to $5.54/MMBtu in February, compared up from $4.34/MMBtu in January.