FERC Filings
Request for Rehearing of EPSA re: ISO New England Inc., Bangor Hydro-Electric Co. and The Consumers of New England v. New England Power Pool
Comments
EPSA supports ISO New England Inc.’s (ISO-NE) effort to progress from an ISO to a viable, well-functioning RTO and largely supports the Commission’s findings in the order granting RTO status to the proposed entity. However, there is one issue that the Commission should reconsider. The order modifies a feature of the proposed stakeholder procedures relating to the submission of alternative proposals by the RTO-NE under Section 205. This modification, changing the alternative proposal threshold to 60% from 70%, is arbitrary and should be reversed.
As the Commission notes in the March 24 Order, the Filing Parties proposed that there be a 70 percent Participants Committee vote necessary in order for stakeholders to require the RTO-NE to include an alternative stakeholder proposal with a Section 205 filing (e.g., the jump-ball provision threshold). This threshold is necessary to ensure that alternative proposals are properly supported by stakeholders and rise to the level of a filing at FERC to be considered on par with an RTO proposal. In lowering the threshold to 60 percent, the Commission does not adequately explain or support its decision to change this provision in the March 24 Order. According to the order,
[The Commission agrees] with intervenors that the proposed 70 percent Participants Committee vote needed to require RTO-NE to include in its Section 205 filing an alternative stakeholder proposal sets too high a bar triggering this stakeholder allowance. Accordingly, in order to facilitate fuller stakeholder input, we will require the Filing Parties to revise this aspect of its proposed stakeholder procedures to allow for the submission of alternative proposals based on a Participants Committee vote of 60 percent or higher.
The modified vote requirement allows an alternative stakeholder proposal to pass the Participants Committee even though two full voting sectors may oppose the alternative. Hence, contrary to the Commission’s rationale, the reduced vote threshold, linked with the ordered creation of the sixth stakeholder sector, does not “facilitate fuller stakeholder input,” but rather empowers existing stakeholders with new rights at the expense of other stakeholders.
The Commission must keep in mind that any party or coalition of parties may intervene, comment and propose alternative options for Commission consideration at any time. The jump-ball provision contemplated here goes beyond the rights of all parties under the Administrative Procedures Act, allowing New England market participants to offer an alternative that may be considered by the Commission on an equal footing to an RTO proposal. The bar for such a filing should be set at a very high level. A 60 percent threshold is not high enough to ensure that an alternative proposal has reached a critical mass of support from a super majority of market participants to a point of parity with an RTO proposal.
While the order notes that “intervenors” requested this modification, there is inadequate evidence to that end in the order or any specification as to the intervenors who made such a request. This information is necessary in order to set the context for the Commission’s justification of the modified threshold. EPSA believes that, as the Filing Parties proposed, it is necessary to maintain a 70 percent threshold in order to support the jump-ball provision, which effectively offers FERC a choice on an equal footing to an RTO proposal. Further, the 70 percent threshold level was established and endorsed by the NEPOOL market participants as part of the overall RTO governance package. The Commission must reinstate the 70 percent jump-ball threshold as proposed.