Dive Brief:
- The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Friday approved the PJM Interconnection’s request to delay its next three base capacity auctions by about six months each through the 2029/30 delivery year, concluding the grid operator “acted in good faith ... to explore consequential market rule changes.”
- PJM proposed the delay in October to develop new market rules after environmental and consumer advocates filed a September complaint objecting to the the grid operator’s failure to reflect the impacts of including reliability must-run power plants in its capacity auctions.
- “Nothing in this order is intended to prejudge the merits of the complaint, which the commission will address in a separate order,” FERC said.
Dive Insight:
PJM told FERC in October that it is working with stakeholders to propose market rule revisions that may address the environmental and consumer advocates’ complaint, and it expects those revisions to be effective for the 2026/2027 base residual auction, which had been scheduled for December.
With FERC’s approval, that auction will now be held in June 2025.
American Municipal Power, a nonprofit wholesale power supplier and services provider active in nine states, opposed the delay, telling regulators that PJM’s proposal appeared to be an effort by the grid operator to make market changes with little stakeholder scrutiny.
In its order, FERC dismissed that concern. “On the contrary, we find that PJM has acted in good faith in proposing to delay the 2026/2027 [base residual auction] to explore consequential market rule changes, which it expects to file with the commission soon, in an attempt to minimize disruption and ensure the orderly conduct of [Reliability Pricing Model] auctions,” FERC said.
“We disagree with AMP that PJM’s waiver request is deficient because PJM does not describe this [Federal Power Act] section 205 filing, as it is still in development,” the commission said.
In September, several groups — the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, Public Citizen, Sustainable FERC Project and Union of Concerned Scientists — filed a complaint asserting that PJM’s capacity market rules are unjust and unreasonable because they fail to account for the resource adequacy contributions of reliability must-run units in its capacity auctions.
Those advocacy groups supported PJM’s waiver request, as did the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, Public Service Enterprise Group companies, Constellation Energy Generation and the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio’s Office of the Federal Energy Advocate.
