FERC's opt-out provision for aggregations of demand response resources is rooted in its established policy allowing retail regulators to prohibit demand response resources from bidding into wholesale markets. In a separate order, FERC opened a proceeding to consider eliminating that opt-out provision as well.
Commissioners Danly and Christie are not on board with trimming the scope of the opt-out provision, and, in separate statements, said they would expand the opt-out provision.
FERC's orders should be of interest to a wide range of electricity market participants, including utilities, generation companies, investors in storage and other electricity resources and electricity customers.
Order No.2222 rehearing
Background
As discussed in a prior post to this blog, Order No.2222市场规则必须容留DER聚合物参与,这些规则必须解决:(1)DERs通过聚合直接参加RTO/ISO市场的资格问题;(2)DER聚合物定位需求在地理上尽可能可行RTO/ISO、DER聚合器、分发工具和相关电商零售监管机构之间的协调。
参与FERC批发市场分配系统或零售客户表后的资源联邦电力法赋予FERC跨州批发电权,而州则拥有发电配电设施以及零售销电权。2222,FERC拒绝质疑其强制实施拟议改革的权力,并拒绝允许零售管理机构授权或禁止DERs和/或DER聚合器参与RTO/ISO市场的请求(即分别选入或选出)。ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2021-03/E-1.pdf2222-A)提供几点澄清,但维护第221-A号命令的规定2222除外允许零售管理机构选择退出规定。响应重听请求,委员会排除选择退出规定DER聚合值i.e/em>,那些由不同类型资源组成,包括需求响应而非完全需求响应。
719号指令要求RTOs/ISOs允许聚合商直接向批发市场竞价客户需求响应。FERC允许零售监管局禁止零售客户需求响应由聚合商竞价进入 RTO/ISO市场 。719选出..................保证需求响应资源可与其他形式的分布式能源资源并发,有可能增强竞争并进一步FERC确保公平合理率的任务。719选出选择退出将继续适用于这些聚合物 。
Separate statements
Commissioner Christie dissented from the NOI order, stating that the "end game is to repeal or severely restrict the ‘opt-out' provisions of Order Nos.719." The dissent notes that eighteen states have chosen to use the opt-out provision, and FERC should respect those state policy decisions.
Commissioner Danly concurred. Although opposed to eliminating the opt-out provision, Commissioner Danly recognizes FERC "has the discretion to issue a Notice of Inquiry (NOI) on any topic within its purview." In the comments to be filed, Commissioner Danly is interested in evidence on whether wholesale demand response aggregation programs are providing reliability benefits commensurate with their costs. He notes that "anecdotal evidence suggests their performance during times of strain may be poor, and perhaps terrible."
Comments in response to the NOI are due 90 days after date of publication in the Federal Register, and reply comments are due 120 days after date of the NOI's publication in the Federal Register.
State regulation of net metering may be a thing of the past if a recent petition filed by the New England Ratepayers Association ("NERA") with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ("FERC") is granted. NERA's petition requests that FERC (1) find that there is exclusive federal jurisdiction over wholesale energy sales from generation sources located on the customer side of the retail meter (such as rooftop solar facilities), and (2) order that the rates for such sales be priced in accordance with the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 ("PURPA") or the Federal Power Act ("FPA"), as applicable.
The NERA petition will be highly controversial. Hence, this post should be of interest to a wide range of market participants, including owners of behind the meter generation, utilities, participants in wholesale and retail electricity markets, and state commissions and policymakers.
Under a net metering arrangement, the amount of electricity that a customer produces is usually netted by the utility, on a monthly basis, against the amount of electricity that the customer consumes. NERA's petition highlights that, in these instances, utilities may credit a customer for its produced electricity at the same retail rate that the utility sold electricity to the customer.This rate is set by the state regulatory commission and may be approximately four times higher than the prevailing wholesale rate. NERA's petition specifically asks FERC to declare its jurisdiction over electricity sales from rooftop solar facilities and other distributed generation located on the customer side of the retail meter whenever (i) the output of such generators exceeds the customer's demand or (ii) the output from such generators is designed to bypass the customer's load, and is therefore not used to serve demand behind the customer's meter. In each of these circumstances, NERA's petition argues, electricity is being delivered to the local utility for resale to the utility's retail customers, making the transactions wholesale sales in interstate commerce subject to FERC's exclusive jurisdiction.
NERA's petition challenges FERC's 2001 decision in MidAmerican Energy and its 2009 decision in SunEdison addressing the circumstance in which a customer both consumes electricity sold by a utility and delivers power generated on-site to the utility. In MidAmerican Energy, the Commission found that no sale of electricity occurs when (i) a utility customer installs generation and delivers power to the utility, (ii) the utility nets any power delivered against power consumed by the customer during a monthly billing cycle, and (iii) the customer consumes more power than it delivered during such billing cycle.sunEdison 中,委员会扩展其在sunEnergy 中的发现范围为净计量安排,即客户零售表后安装的生成器由第三方拥有,如房顶太阳能开发商。
质疑委员会在MidAEnergy 和sunEdison 中的调查结果,NERA请求点d.C电路2010年对Se卡尔Edison v.FERC finding that FERC's reliance on netting periods to determine whether sales of electricity occurred with regard to station power consumed by a generator was "rather arbitrary and unprincipled – certainly as a jurisdictional standard."[1] NERA's petition also challenges the principle of netting approved by the Commission in MidAmerican Energy and SunEdison by arguing that, even when electricity is returned in kind in connection with a wholesale sale, the Commission has recognized that the returned energy does not diminish FERC's jurisdiction over the wholesale sale in the first instance.
Because the petition raises threshold questions of federal jurisdiction, the Commission's decision will likely have serious implications for every state net metering program, with the exception of those portions of the country not served by the interstate electric grid (i.e., Alaska, Hawaii and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas-controlled grid). If FERC grants the petition, interested parties, including state commissions, would almost certainly file requests for rehearing with the Commission, and, if denied, seek review of the order from a U.S.电路法院.
NERA