FERC Filings

MOTION OF ELECTRIC POWER SUPPLY ASSOCIATION, ELECTRIC CONSUMERS RESOURCE COUNCIL AND AMERICAN PUBLIC POWER ASSOICATION TO DEFER COMMENTS ON PJM’S RTO FILING UNTIL JANUARY 2001

Notice

The Commission issued a notice on October 20, 2000 that requires protests, comments and interventions in this docket to be filed on or before November 20, 2000. Electricity Consumers Resource Council, Electric Power Supply Association, and the American Public Power Association (hereinafter referred to as Petitioners) respectfully request the Commission to defer comments on this filing to a date which will coincide with that set by the Commission for comments on the RTO filings that are due on January 15, 2001. The reasons for this deferral are set forth below.

The Electric Power Supply Association (EPSA) is the national trade association representing competitive power suppliers, including independent power producers, merchant generators and power marketers. EPSA members provide reliable, competitively priced electricity from environmentally responsible facilities in U.S. and global power markets. EPSA seeks to bring the benefits of competition to all power customers.¹

The Electricity Consumers Resource Council (ELCON) is an association of industrial consumers of electricity organized to promote the development of coordinated and rational federal and state policies that will assure an adequate, reliable and efficient electricity supply for all users at competitive rates and prices. ELCON member companies produce a wide range of products, including: steel, aluminum, chemicals, petroleum, motor vehicles, industrial gases, machinery, glass, agricultural and food products, rubber, computer chips, paper and electronics. The member companies of ELCON consume approximately five percent of all electricity in the United States.

APPA is the national service organization representing the interests of not-for-profit, publicly owned electric utilities throughout the United States. APPA member utilities serve some of the nation’s largest cities, such as Los Angeles, Sacramento, Seattle, Phoenix (Salt River Project), Jacksonville, Austin, San Antonio, Nashville, Memphis, Cleveland, Omaha, Orlando, and cities and towns on Long Island (Long Island Power Authority). Several state public power agencies, such as New York Power Authority, South Carolina Public Service Authority, and Lower Colorado River Authority in Texas, provide electric power to many communities within their states. In addition, APPA members include joint action power supply agencies and public power distributors. The majority of APPA member utilities are located in small- and medium-sized communities in every state except Hawaii.

Order No. 2000 established two deadlines for RTO filings: a general one of October 15, 2000 for most transmission owners² and one of January 15, 2001 for those transmission owners in approved transmission entities.³ The Petitioners believe that the Commission bifurcated the comment period for practical reasons. As is clear from the number of filings made last week, it was one way to divide up the enormous workload for both industry and for the Commission. The Petitioners also believe the Commission allowed public utilities in approved transmission entities to file on a later date because there was not the same urgency to their filings. The fact that the Commission had determined that the January 15, 2001 filers were part of an entity that conformed with the 11 ISO principles meant they were further along in their development than ones that had not received such an approval by the Commission.

PJM made its RTO filing on October 11, 2000, a little more than three months early. PJM’s filing, while it is commendable that it could be completed so far in advance of the Commission’s deadline, presents several problems to the Petitioners. First of all, there is the practical issue. Many of the Petitioners are national players and are participating in virtually every major RTO filing that is being made. As the Commission is well aware, the issues raised by these filings are numerous and complex and require significant resources from the Petitioners. Petitioners are being forced to triage these filings and devote the most time to those with the biggest problems. And quite frankly, as PJM itself admits “…[t]he Commission resolved most of the issues raised by Order No. 2000 nearly three years ago when PJM became an ISO.” Application at 3. There is not the same urgency to this filing that there is to many of the less developed RTOs.


An equally compelling but actually a more important issue for the Petitioners is the Order No. 2000 requirement of interregional coordination which requires RTOs to ensure the integration of reliability practices within an interconnection and market interfaces among regions. Because this requirement involves the coordination of interregional market standards and practices, the Petitioners believe that it will be impossible to measure PJM’s compliance with this requirement until they have the benefit of seeing neighboring RTO proposals such as those in New York, New England, and to the South and West. PJM, in its filing, points to the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) among it, the New York ISO, ISO-New England and Ontario’s Independent Electricity Market Operator as indicative of its efforts to manage the “seams” issues. How can this effort be judged unless market participants and the Commission can evaluate PJM’s filing at the same time as they evaluate these other RTO filings? Petitioners acknowledge that the logical conclusion to this argument could be that all RTO filings nationwide (or at least interconnect-wide) should be reviewed at the same time; however, a line needs to be drawn somewhere and it seems reasonable to honor the Commission’s bifurcated filing process that was made in Order No. 2000.

Finally, Petitioners recognize that some may take the position that there would be merit in having the Commission approve a transmission entity as meeting the Order No. 2000 requirements sooner rather than later and therefore, provide guidance to the industry on what constitutes a full-fledged RTO. But, as the Commission is well aware, it has through numerous orders in PJM filings over the past few years given the industry a great deal of guidance already. PJM’s filing does not raise many new or novel issues. So when Petitioners weigh the benefits of this early guidance against the practical “costs” of addressing multiple filings that are less further along in development together with impossibility of evaluating the critical Eighth Function, the clear answer is to delay temporarily the due date for comments on PJM’s filing.

Therefore, the Petitioners respectfully urge the Commission to act expeditiously to defer the comment period on PJM’s filing to a date which will coincide with that set for the public utilities required to file on January 15, 2001.

Respectfully submitted,
ELECTRIC POWER SUPPLY ASSOCIATION

______________________________________
By:
Julie Simon
Vice President of Policy

Electric Power Supply Association
1401 H Street, N.W., Suite 760
Washington, D.C. 20005
Phone: 202-789-7200
Fax: 202-789-7201
E-mail: jsimon@epsa.org


ELECTRICITY CONSUMERS
RESOURCE COUNCIL

Dr. John Anderson
Executive Director
Electricity Consumers Resource Council
1333 H Street, N.W.
The West Tower, Suite 800
Washington, D.C. 20005
Phone: (202) 682-1390
Fax: (202) 289-6370
E-mail: janderson@elcon.org

AMERICAN PUBLIC POWER ASSOCIATION

Allen Mosher
Director of Policy Analysis
American Public Power Association
2301 M Street, N. W.
Washington, D.C. 20037
Phone: (202) 467-2944
Fax: (202) 467-2992
E-mail: amosher@APPAnet.org

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE

I hereby certify that I have served a copy of the foregoing document by first class United States mail, postage prepaid, upon each person designated on the official service list compiled by the Secretary in this proceeding.

Dated at Washington, D.C. this 26th day of October, 2000.
___________________________________
Julie Simon

¹ The comments contained in this filing represent the position of EPSA as an organization, but not necessarily the view of any particular member with respect to any issue.

²18 C.F.R. §35.34(c) 1999.

³18 C.F.R. §35.34(h) 1999.

• Back to Issue Menu