Three demand response providers asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission April 2 to block new PJM rules requiring them to provide officer certifications and additional information on their customers.

Comverge, Inc., Viridity Energy and Energy Curtailment Specialists said the rules create unnecessary barriers to demand response participation in PJM’s capacity markets, in violation of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The companies also said the rules, which PJM made effective immediately after their approval by the Markets and Reliability Committee March 28, should have been submitted to FERC for review.  (See previous story.)

The rules require Curtailment Service Providers seeking to participate in capacity auctions to file “Sell Offer Plans,” including information about the provider’s customers. CSPs also must have a company officer sign a certification attesting to the company’s intent to physically deliver MWs.

The group, filing as the Demand Response Coalition, asked FERC to rule by April 19, the deadline for DR providers to file Sell Offer Plans for consideration in the 2016-17 Base Residual Auction (see EL13-57).

The coalition said the Sell Offer Plan requirement is “unduly burdensome and fails to take into account the dynamic nature of these customers and their respective demand resources.”

The officer certification requirement, the group said, “ignores the right of all capacity providers to plan to meet their capacity obligations with multiple capacity products through market mechanisms specifically enabled by the PJM tariff.”

The Ohio Public Utilities Commission filed an intervention in the case on Thursday, saying the new rules were necessary to ensure PJM’s reliability. “The issue is simple, whether a DR provider should be afforded the potential for unwarranted profits for undeliverable or overcounted DR resources to the detriment of PJM’s obligation to ensure reliability,” the commission wrote.