The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Thursday rejected PSEG’s challenge to PJM’s procedure for selecting new transmission projects, saying the company had failed to prove that PJM’s methodology was “tantamount to black box decision-making.”
PSEG had asked the commission to reconsider its November 29 order accepting revisions to PJM’s Operating Agreement that clarified how the RTO will use sensitivity studies, modeling assumptions and scenario planning analyses in developing its Regional Transmission Expansion Plan (RTEP).
PSEG asked FERC to require PJM to provide more details on how it will decide what scenarios to utilize and how to weight them.
The commission said, however, that PJM’s revisions “strike an appropriate balance between the need for PJM to maintain some flexibility … and the need for sufficient detail in the tariff to allow stakeholders to participate in the planning process.
“The process is not a `black box’ but an open and transparent process into which PSEG and all PJM stakeholders have the opportunity to provide input,” the commission ruled.
FERC also rejected PSEG’s request for additional safeguards to maintain cost controls market efficiency transmission projects modified as a result of sensitivity and scenario analyses. The commission noted that the revised agreement did not eliminate the cost benefit test that such projects must pass before approval.
PSEG did “not provide any concrete examples of how a lack of `limits to the extent to which an existing reliability or market efficiency project may be modified as a result of sensitivity and scenario studies’ puts PJM’s cost control measures at risk,” the commission said.
PSEG also requested that PJM align its RTEP process with the design of its forward capacity market, saying PJM’s “generation-related assumptions” in the RTEP should “be the same as the assumptions underlying the various [capacity] auctions.”
The commission rejected that request as outside the scope of the proceeding. It said PSEG should raise such questions within PJM’s stakeholder process or through a separate section 206 complaint to the commission.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Thursday gave final approval to one reliability standard and opened for comment two others.
The commission issued a final rule on the North American Electric Reliability Corp.’s Modeling, Data, and Analysis standard (MOD-028-2; Docket No. RM12-19-000). The rule clarifies the timing and frequency of total transfer capability measurements, which are needed to calculate a transmission provider’s available transfer capability.
In addition, the commission issued Notices of Proposed Rulemaking for two proposed NERC standards: Frequency Response and Frequency Bias Setting (BAL-003-1; Docket No. RM13-11-000) and Protection System Maintenance Reliability Standard (PRC-005-2; Docket No. RM13-7-000), in compliance with directives from FERC Order 693.
Frequency Response
The BAL standard includes requirements for the measurement and provision of frequency response, filling a gap in current standards.
The rule will establish a minimum frequency response obligation for each Balancing Authority, provides a uniform calculation of frequency response, establishes frequency bias settings that establish values closer to actual Balancing Authority frequency response, and encourages coordinated automatic generation control (AGC) operation.
The commission said it will require NERC to submit an analysis of the availability of frequency response resources during the first year of the rule’s implementation. If Balancing Authorities are unable to meet their obligations, NERC will be required to recommend changes to improve compliance.
The commission also said it will require NERC to revise the standard to address concerns over the withdrawal of primary frequency response before activation of secondary frequency response. The premature withdrawal can lead to under-frequency load shedding and possible cascading outages.
Protection System Maintenance
The proposed PRC standard details required maintenance and maintenance schedules for protection systems and load shedding equipment.
It will supersede four existing standards, PRC-005-1.1b (Transmission and Generation Protection System Maintenance and Testing), PRC-008-0 (Underfrequency Load Shedding Equipment Maintenance), PRC-011-0 (Undervoltage Load Shedding Equipment Maintenance) and PRC-017-0 (Special Protection System Maintenance and Testing).
It was one step forward and one step back for PJM’s offshore wind hopes as federal officials announced the auction of 112,800 acres off Virginia while New Jersey regulators rejected a deal with developers of a proposed Atlantic City wind farm.
VA’s Wind Energy Area (Source: BOEM)
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said yesterday it will conduct an auction Sept. 4 for an area 23.5 nautical miles off Virginia Beach with potential wind generation of more than 2,000 megawatts. The online auction will use an ‘‘ascending clock’’ format in which BOEM sets an asking price and increases it in steps until only one bidder remains.
Eight companies have been prequalified to bid: Apex Virginia Offshore Wind, LLC; Virginia Electric and Power Company (“Dominion Virginia Power”); Energy Management, Inc.; EDF Renewable Development, Inc.; Iberdrola Renewables, Inc.; Sea Breeze Energy, LLC; Orisol Energy U.S., Inc. and Fisherman’s Energy, LLC.
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the Virginia lease marks the “transition from planning to action when it comes to capturing” offshore wind’s potential.
Exhibit A is Fishermen’s Energy’s proposed 25 MW pilot project off Atlantic City.
On Friday, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities voted unanimously to reject a proposed deal between the developer and the Division of Rate Counsel to allow the project to proceed.
In 2010, New Jersey enacted a law committing the state to purchase 1,100 MW of offshore wind by 2020. Ratepayers would subsidize the cost of the above-market energy from the plant through Offshore Renewable Energy Certificates (OREC).
‘Net Benefits’ Test
BPU won’t award ORECs, however, unless it is convinced that a wind farm’s economic and environmental benefits exceed its costs.
The Rate Counsel, which represents ratepayers before the BPU, previously had opposed the Fishermen’s project for failing to meet the “net economic benefit” test. But Rate Counsel dropped its opposition after negotiating reductions in the projected rates from the project.
The board rejected the Rate Counsel’s deal with the developers Friday, saying that a proposed $19 million contingency fund — which would have made ratepayers liable if the project failed to receive $100 million in potential federal grants and tax incentives — violated state law.
“The only way ratepayers …can be at risk of paying for the cost of the project is through the ORECs,” BPU spokesman J. Gregory Reinert told RTO Insider.
Rate Counsel Director Stefanie Brand told RTO Insider she disagrees with BPU’s legal analysis. She said the stipulation reduced the projected ratepayer costs of the project by 40%. “It went from being one of the most expensive offshore wind projects [in the U.S.] to one of the cheapest,” she said.
The board’s action is not the final word on the project. If developers and Rate Counsel cannot reach agreement with the BPU, the case could go to an evidentiary hearing later this year.
Renewable generators will have more sources of balancing services and electric storage providers will be more competitive in the regulation market under a final rule approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Thursday.
The commission said the new rule (Order 784, Docket Nos. RM11-24, AD10-13) will improve competition and transparency in ancillary services markets at a time when the growth of wind power and other intermittent sources is increasing the need for imbalance services. The commission said the new rule “enhances the overall opportunities for third-parties to compete to make sales of ancillary services while continuing to limit the exercise of market power.”
The rule requires PJM and other transmission providers to consider speed and accuracy in acquiring regulation resources, removes obstacles to selling such services at market-based rates and creates new accounting categories for tracking investments in electric storage.
The ruling, which takes effect 120 days after publication in the Federal Register, will make it easier for batteries, flywheels and other emerging technologies to compete against slower-responding gas- and coal-fired generators to provide regulation and other services.
In addition, “Because most generation-based ancillary services can be provided by many of the generators connected to the transmission system, some customers may be able to provide or procure such services more economically than the transmission provider can,” the commission said.
The Electricity Storage Association hailed the rule as a “major victory.”
“The effects of this rule are simple – there will be more deployment of technology, stronger investments in projects, and a broader demonstration of the benefits of energy storage to the grid,” Judith Judson, chair of the trade group’s Advocacy Council and director of emerging technologies at Customized Energy Solutions, said in a statement.
FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff told reporters in a press briefing the rule is designed to increase “efficiency and opportunity” and is “extremely important” to wind generators, which need imbalance services to compensate for their fluctuations in output.
“Our job isn’t to incent any particular technologies,” Wellinghoff said. “Our job is to ensure that markets are open and transparent and fair to all technologies.”
Impact on Frequency Regulation
FERC’s pro forma OATT requires transmission customers to purchase regulation and frequency response service at cost-based rates from the public utility transmission provider or to “make alternative comparable arrangements” to self-supply the service, either through their own resources or purchases from third-parties.
The new ruling builds on FERC’s 2011 Order 755, which increased the pay for fast responding frequency regulation sources such as batteries and flywheels in PJM and other regions with independent system operators.
The rule requires transmission providers, including those outside of ISO regions, to share with customers their reasoning and any related data used to determine whether the customer has made “alternative comparable arrangements.” To ensure “apples-to-apples” comparison of regulation resources, the rule also requires transmission providers to post on OASIS historical one-minute and ten-minute Area Control Error data for the most recent calendar year, and update this posting annually.
The commission said the changes were needed to prevent transmission providers from requiring customers to purchase more regulation reserves than necessary.
The changes are good news to companies such as Beacon Power, LLC, which says its storage flywheels can respond nearly instantaneously to operator control signals — up to 100 times faster than traditional generators. Beacon cited a recent study for the California Energy Commission which found that a 30-50 MW fast-response storage device could provide as much or more regulation capability than a 100 MW combustion turbine.
Beacon last month announced the beginning of construction on a 20-megawatt flywheel energy storage plant in Hazle Township, Pennsylvania that will compete in PJM’s regulation market. The company expects to put 4 MW into commercial operation in September, with the full 20 MW plant operational in the second quarter of 2014. The company’s 20 MW plant in in Stephentown, New York, competes in NYISO’s regulation market.
Avista Policy Revised
In addition to attempting to level the playing field in the regulation market, the order eliminates barriers to competition for several other ancillary services by revising the commission’s Avista policy.
The Avista policy allowed third-party ancillary service providers to sell regulation and frequency response, energy imbalance service and operating reserves at market-based rates without performing a market power study. The policy was based on preventing market power through the “backstop” of cost-based ancillary services from transmission providers; thus market-based sales to PJM and other regional transmission organizations and independent system operators which have no ability to self-supply were prohibited.
The commission said it now concludes that the Avista rule created unreasonable barriers to entry by potential suppliers. The new order allows resources with market-based rate authority for sales of energy and capacity to sell the following ancillary services at market-based rates:
Energy imbalance service: Can sell at market-based rates to transmission providers with intra-hour scheduling (Paragraph 31 of the order). Transmission providers are required by Order 764 to offer intra-hour scheduling by Nov. 12, 2013.
Operating Reserve – Spinning Reserve and Supplemental Reserve services: Can sell at market-based rates to transmission providers with intra-hour scheduling that supports delivery of operating reserves from one Balancing Authority to another. (P 54)
Reactive supply and voltage control: The commission said it could not allow such market-based sales of regulation and frequency response service and reactive supply and voltage control, however, because the resources capable of providing those services are more limited than those supplying energy and capacity, leaving those markets more at risk to market power. The commission said it will continue to study ways to further open these markets to competition in a new proceeding. (P 55)
Competitive solicitations
In the meantime, the commission said sales of such services can be made at or below the transmission provider’s OATT rate, or at market-based rates resulting from a competitive solicitation. (P 13)
Such solicitations must be transparent (“open and fair”) and competitive (“adequate seller interest”), with precise definitions of the products sought. (P 95) The solicitation will be subject to an independent third-party review if the buyer solicits offers from one or more of its affiliates. (P 100)
Accounting Rules for Energy Storage
The third major component of the new rule was FERC’s addition of new electric plant and operation and maintenance expense accounts for energy storage devices.
The commission said the new accounts will help state and federal regulators ensure that utilities don’t obtain excessive rate recovery by seeking reimbursements under both cost-based and market-based rates for a single energy storage asset.
The Market Implementation Committee last week approved an issue charge to consider modifying the algorithm used for publishing supply curves from the annual capacity auction.
The vote followed MIC’s approval in June of a problem statement by Jason Barker of Exelon to seek improvements to the supply curve currently produced by the Market Monitor, which masks individual price-quantity offers. Barker said the current curves — a compromise intended to balance transparency against disclosure of commercially sensitive data — aren’t accurate enough for use in analysis. (MIC Seeks Better Way to Draw Capacity Supply Curve.)
Comparison of PJM Market Monitor’s Current Capacity Supply Curve & Proposed Revision (Source: Marketing Analytics)
The current method is the result of a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission order in a dispute over PJM’s proposal to publish price-quantity pairs after the 2010 Base Residual Auction. Constellation Energy and the monitor said that the data could be used to reconstruct participants’ offers in the SWMAAC locational deliverability area because of the concentration of generation ownership.
“We’re not opposed to providing additional granularity in the supply curve,” Market Monitor Joseph Bowring told MIC last week. But he cautioned that the FERC order made clear the commissioners’ “preference to err on the side of not providing information that could result in market power and collusion.”
A presentation by the monitor concluded that the moving average alternative suggested by Exelon is “unlikely to pass through the point at which supply equals demand because supply is an increasing function.”
Instead, Bowring offered an alternative to divide the supply curve into segments of equal megawatts, plot the average price within each segment and force the adjusted line through the clearing point. The monitor said the proposal will more closely track the true offer curve as the magnitude of jumps in supply decreases.
FirstEnergy Corp. announced July 9 it will close two coal-fired generators with 2,080 MW of capacity by October 9 because it would be too expensive to retrofit them to meet federal environmental rules.
Hatfield’s Ferry Power Plant (Source: FirstEnergy)
FirstEnergy spokesman Jennifer Young said the decision to close Hatfield’s Ferry, in Masontown, Pa., and Mitchell, in Courtney, Pa., was based on the cost of complying with current and anticipated environmental regulations during a time of low wholesale power prices.
The closure was the first announced in PJM since the Obama administration’s June 25 announcement that it will draft greenhouse gas regulations for existing generating plants.
Timing Coincidental
Young said the timing of the two announcements was coincidental. The $275 million it would cost to bring the two plants into compliance with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) was what triggered the closing, FirstEnergy officials said.
FirstEnergy’s announcement followed NRG Energy’s decision, announced May 15, to accelerate the closing of five coal-fired units in Pennsylvania. The shutdown of Portland units 1 and 2 (401 MW) will be moved from January 2015 to June 1, 2014, while Titus units 1, 2, and 3 (243 MWs) will close Sept. 1 – more than a year and a half earlier than originally planned. Both are in the MetEd transmission zone.
Mitchell Power Plant (Source: FirstEnergy)
The closing of Hatfield’s Ferry and Mitchell will eliminate 380 jobs and reduce FirstEnergy’s generating capacity by about 10%. FirstEnergy’s 18,000 MW generating fleet after the deactivations will still be dominated by coal (56%), with big contributions from nuclear (22%), followed by renewables (13%) and gas/oil (9%).
FirstEnergy announced the closing of nine coal plants last year. The company expects to invest approximately $650 million to bring five other coal-fired plants into compliance with MATS: the Bruce Mansfield Plant in Pennsylvania; Harrison, Pleasants and Fort Martin plants in West Virginia, and the Sammis plant in Ohio.
NRG Closures
NRG and GenOn Energy, which merged last year, are idling nine coal-fired plants through 2015.
NRG is closing the Portland plant as part of a settlement with the states of New Jersey and Connecticut over plant’s air emissions. The company cited environmental compliance costs in the closing of the Titus plant. The plants employ 140 workers.
NRG announced June 24 that it will convert two coal-fired plants, Avon Lake in Ohio (732 MW) and New Castle in Pennsylvania (330 MW) to natural gas. The plants had been scheduled for deactivation in April 2015. Although the repowered plants will have the same peak output, their capacity factors will likely drop as they are dispatched as peaking plants, NRG spokesman David Gaier said yesterday.
Gaier said that the company is evaluating whether to convert Portland to natural gas. Titus is too small and unprofitable to be a candidate for repowering, he said.
Non-Utility Generation Closures
PJM also learned recently of the unrelated closing of two small non-utility generators. The Piney Creek NUG (31 MW) in PenElec told PJM June 25 that it had closed April 12. The Koppers NUG (8 MW) in the PPL transmission territory, notified PJM July 1 that it plans to close Sept. 30.
In all, PJM expects the closure of about 13,000 MW of generation through October 2015.
The 2014/2015 2nd PJM incremental auction opened yesterday and will run through 5 p.m. Friday.
Existing PJM generators with available capacity are required to participate in the auction.
Suppliers must confirm the modeling of their capacity resources before their sell offers are accepted for the auction.
Generation, demand response and energy efficiency resources must confirm zone assignment, locational deliverability area (LDA) and product type. Generators also must verify unit location by state, unit type and fuel type. Instructions for confirming resource modeling and entering offers bids are available in the eRPM User Guide. See also Frequently Asked Questions on incremental auctions.
Were it not for the strong defense provided to us by attorney, Jerry Levine, who represented us pro bono, we might have been forced to shut down before we had a chance to introduce ourselves to those who care about PJM. We can’t thank him enough.
Thanks also to Andy Sellars and the Online Media Legal Network at Harvard University, who connected us with Jerry. OMLN finds lawyers willing to provide free and reduced fee legal assistance for online journalists. If you worry that the demise of the newspaper industry threatens our democracy, this is an organization truly worthy of your support.
Below is a summary of the legal position Jerry laid out in a letter to PJM in April:
PJM Insider’s use of “PJM” in our title is protected by both nominative fair use and the news reporting/news commentary privilege, among other rights. Courts generally recognize three elements of nominative fair use: (1) the trademark owner, product, or service in question must not be readily identifiable without use of the trademark; (2) the defendant must use only as much of the mark as is necessary to identify the trademark owner, product, or service; and (3) the defendant must do nothing that would suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark owner.
PJM Insider is a news service focusing solely on PJM. There is no way to identify PJM Interconnection without directly referring to its name. PJM Insider uses only that much of the mark as is necessary to identify that it is discussing PJM Interconnection. Finally, PJM Insider specifically declares, in multiple locations on the website and in every communication, that it is neither sponsored, affiliated nor endorsed by PJM Interconnection.
Trademark law does not let a trademark owner exert its trademark rights to stop news reporting about it or its products or services. There are several legal rationales for this result: there is no risk of confusion between the news source and the trademark owner; nominative fair use protects this use of the trademark owner’s mark; and the federal dilution statute expressly exempts “news reporting and news commentary” from a dilution claim. See 15 U.S.C. § 1125(c)(3)(B). Furthermore, trademark law does not permit a trademark owner to use its trademark rights to silence commentary and criticism. Congress has created a categorical exemption for “criticizing . . . or commenting upon the famous mark owner or the goods or services of the famous mark owner.” 15 U.S.C. § 1125(c)(3)(A)(ii).
We also pointed out to PJM that many trade publications incorporate the name of the organization that is the focus of their coverage without implying any endorsement or official connection. For example:
Inside FERC, published by Platts, has covered the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for more than 25 years and no one in the industry confuses it with the commission itself. Platts also publishes a newsletter covering the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Inside NRC, also without confusion.
SNL Financial LC publishes two publications covering FERC, FERC Power Report and FERC Gas Report.
Inside Washington Publishers publishes several newsletters whose titles incorporate the subject of their coverage, including: Inside EPA, Inside the Pentagon, OSHA Online and FDA Week.
Congressional Quarterly has been covering the U.S. House and Senate since 1945.
We are following in this tradition of focused, institution-specific coverage. PJM’s lawyers say our situation is different because PJM is not a government agency and has trademarked its name.
It is true that PJM and other regional transmission organizations are not government agencies. But as Michael H. Dworkin & Rachel Aslin Goldwasser wrote in the Energy Law Journal, there are several lenses through which to view RTOs: “as agents of the FERC, as monopolists or private regulated entities, as `hybrid’ organizations, as similar to commodities trading markets, as agents of some of the market participants, and as planning processes.”
They elaborated: “RTOs set rules approved by the FERC that determine which plants will be turned on and off, they make short and long-term planning decisions, they ensure reliability, and they monitor the market for abuses. The FERC, through its general orders and rulings on specific issues, sets the parameters for RTO actions and implements the FERC’s directives. In this sense, an RTO is a regional representative of the FERC, acting as an agent for non-regional governmental sectors.” (Emphasis added.)
As a FERC-authorized RTO, PJM Interconnection serves a central role in the both the reliability and the cost of electric service for more than 60 million people in the MidAtlantic U.S. Like FERC itself, it is similarly deserving of coverage by an independent publication.
RTO Insider is an independent publication of RTO Insider LLC. It is neither connected with nor endorsed by PJM Interconnection, LLC.
By Rich Heidorn Jr.
We hadn’t even published our first article when the cease and desist letter arrived via email in February.
PJM Interconnection, LLC was unhappy that we had registered the website PJMInsider.com. We have a trademark on those three letters, said PJM’s lawyers. No one else can use them.
We disagreed, and continue to disagree to this day about our legal right to use PJM to describe our coverage.
But last week, we signed a settlement agreement with PJM agreeing to change the name of our publication to RTO Insider — our corporate name — to avoid PJM’s threatened trademark infringement suit.
All of the lawyers we consulted told us we would likely prevail if the case went to court. Unfortunately, as a new publication — funded by savings, credit cards and sweat equity — we didn’t have the $60,000 we were told it would cost to contest PJM’s suit. So, sadly, we were forced to make a strategic retreat.
PJM officials will tell you their stance was solely motivated by their obligation to “protect” their trademark from infringement. While it is true that trademark holders can lose their rights if they do not defend them, it is also true that the media are treated differently under trademark law.
As much as we tried, we could never come up with a better title for our publication than PJM Insider. And we still haven’t come up with any other way to explain — in just a few short words — what we’re covering than to mention “PJM” in the title.
We had no intention of tricking readers into thinking we were connected with PJM Interconnection. Indeed, our value proposition from the beginning has been our independence — both from individual stakeholder groups and from PJM itself. We have lived up to our word by scrupulously including disclaimers on all of our publications and literature.
Our lawyer explained all this in a letter to PJM. He also explained why PJM’s legitimate intellectual property concerns do not allow it to censor the free press. (See sidebar, Trademark Law and the News Media.)
We hoped PJM would be satisfied with that. We were wrong. On June 6, PJM emailed us a draft of the lawsuit they said they planned to file the next day.
As you will see below, the suit is both hilarious — because the claims are so ludicrous — and infuriating, because PJM was able to get its way solely because it had a bigger bankroll.
We expect this to be about the last time we write about this dispute. But we do feel it important that PJM’s members, who are supposed to run the organization, and PJM’s ratepayers, who pay for it, be aware of the organization’s bullying behavior.
So why did PJM hire an expensive Philadelphia law firm to go after us? Well, PJM and I have a history. As a member of the enforcement staff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, I led an audit of PJM with two other staffers.
During that audit, I met many of PJM’s management and dealt almost daily for months with Chief Financial Officer Susanne Daugherty, who put up with our nettlesome questions with far more patience and grace than most could have mustered. I have tremendous respect for Susanne and most of the people I dealt with at PJM.
Due to FERC rules on the confidentiality of audits, I can’t explain exactly why this experience may have factored into the trademark dispute. The audit report, as released by FERC, didn’t disclose any major problems.
But it’s clear that while PJM’s lawyers claimed to be concerned that our publication could be confused with PJM, it is actually our independence that frightens some in the organization.
We’ll let you be the judge of whether PJM’s suit had merit. Below are some of the more entertaining claims, along with our responses. The full draft of the suit can be downloaded Insider-Draft-Complaint-with-Exhibits-6-6-13.
Pgh. 16: “…The title design of RTO’s publication, “PJM Insider,” is visually similar to the title design of PJM’s publication “Inside Lines,” with the title of both publications appearing on the left in block lettering accompanied by a logo image of power transmission lines on the right.”
We plead guilty to a lack of originality. Sadly, the iconography of the electric power industry is mostly power lines and cooling towers. Dozens of companies and websites employ such images.
But did we copy PJM’s look? Uh, no. The logo was designed by my computer-savvy 14-year-old stepson. And he had never seen PJM’s website before.
Pgh. 30: “As a result of RTO’s acts of infringement, PJM has suffered and continues to suffer damage and irreparable harm…”
Last time we checked, PJM was a monopoly. There’s nothing we could do or write that would give ratepayers in the 13 states within the PJM footprint the ability to choose another electric grid.
In 2012, PJM had 816 members. Current membership is 847. That’s an increase of more than 30, so it doesn’t appear we’ve hurt PJM here.
Pgh. 33: “PJM does, however, object to any implication by RTO that the company or the publication is authorized and/or sponsored by, or in any way related to PJM.”
So do we.
We didn’t launch PJM Insider as a “gripe site.” Most of what we publish is just-the-facts ma’am coverage of meetings and issues, not criticism.
But no one who reads our coverage of the PJM annual meeting or the Board of Managers election could confuse us with a house organ. See also our coverage of the uproar over the board’s plan – since rescinded — to get rid of Market Monitor Joseph Bowring and Monitoring Analytics.
We had to reproduce this paragraph of the suit so readers would know we weren’t making it up. State utility regulators are accused of many things, but we’ve never heard anyone say they can’t read. Moreover, the “consumers” PJM refers to in the same paragraph are people who work for utilities, electric cooperatives, attorneys, electric marketers — hardly an unsophisticated audience.
The fact is, anyone who spends more than a minute with our publication or on our web site will see our ubiquitous disclaimers.
Pgh. 51: “Because of the wide public recognition in the energy sector of PJM’ s registered mark, it is likely that the consuming public who encounter RTO’s use of the domain name and URL www.pjminsider.com/ will be confused, mistaken, or deceived into believing that RTO’s goods and services originated from, or are sponsored, endorsed, or approved by PJM.”
PJM apparently doesn’t like it that when people do a Google search for information on PJM, we also appear (see screenshot). We didn’t get our Google ranking based on the name of our site. We got it because we’ve written nearly 200 stories on PJM since February. People may have looked at us because the word PJM told them what we cover — but they only came back if they found value in what we are writing. And, as you can see, our disclaimer is right there.
PJM’s trademark covers:
Bulk electrical market services in the nature of commodity brokerage and price quotations in the field of electricity.
Management, administration, and operation of electricity transmission, power and energy markets; auction and trading services in the electricity transmission, power and energy markets; and provision of information related thereto.
We’re not running energy markets or running an electric grid— that’s PJM business.
Are we competing with PJM regarding “the provision of information related thereto”? For that, we make no apologies. Transmission of electricity may be a natural monopoly. Information about PJM shouldn’t be.
PJM members and stakeholders need an independent news source to help them keep track of the myriad issues and to serve as an historical record of previous stakeholder actions. Hundreds of you tell us every week that you agree, by opening our emails and visiting our website.
What happens next?
Over the next couple months we will be moving our website to a new URL (www.rtoinsider.com) and changing our email addresses accordingly. Nothing else will change.
We will continue to push for more transparency in the organization. We think it’s outrageous that the Board of Managers rarely meets in public, and that PJM refuses to disclose board members’ compensation. And we think section 4.5 of PJM’s Code of Conduct — which bars us from quoting members by name without their permission at all meetings but those of the Members Committee and Markets and Reliability Committee — is unnecessary and only feeds the distrust of critics who deride the organization as a “cartel.”
We will continue to be in the room when you can’t be – and asking the questions that need to be asked.
The Market Implementation Committee next month will consider proposals to allow network load customers more frequent opportunities to switch to nodal pricing.
Current rules allow network customers to make such switch requests annually, effective June 1st. A stakeholder group formed under a problem statement approved at the request of retail marketer Direct Energy proposed two alternatives to allow such switches monthly. The annual switching rules don’t allow retail marketers to provide innovative products, Direct Energy said.
Both proposals would limit intra-year switches to 5% of the electric distribution company (EDC) network service peak load. The differences between the two proposals are the additional caps on the number of customers per EDC: either five or 50 customers per EDC.
Marji Philips, of Hess Corp., said the intra-year switches could hurt Financial Transmission Rights holders. “If five large industrial customers switch to nodal in the middle of the year, your [FTR] holdings could be seriously impacted,” she said.
David Pratzon, of GT Power Group, questioned the breadth of support for the proposed changes, saying only a small number of stakeholders worked on the problem statement.
The proposals would phase in implementation of intra-year requests with quarterly switches allowed in the first year and monthly switches permitted in the following years. The first switches would be available effective June 1, 2014.
Customers would be required to provide 60 days’ notice before the switch becomes effective, a deadline that could be extended to up to 150 days for complex cases.
As under current rules, customers would be barred from switching from nodal back to zonal.
The MIC is expected to vote on the proposals at its next meeting.
