Dive Brief:
-
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Friday dismissed complaints by the West Virginia Public Service Commission and the PJM Interconnection’s market monitor seeking to gain access to one of the grid operator’s key committee meetings.
-
In part, FERC rejected the complaints of an inability to attend PJM’s Liaison Committee meetings because the PSC and Monitoring Analytics, the independent market monitor, have other avenues for communicating with PJM’s board.
-
FERC Commissioner Mark Christie concurred with the decision to reject the PSC’s complaint, but argued Monitoring Analytics should have been allowed to go to Liaison Committee meetings. Further, Christie called for giving state regulators more authority in all regional transmission organizations. “State regulators have been largely frozen out of any serious role in RTOs’ actual decision-making, even when those decisions have a direct and material impact on retail rates paid by their states’ consumers,” he said.
Dive Insight:
The dispute centers on PJM’s Liaison Committee, which was set up for communication between PJM members and the grid operator’s board. The committee’s charter restricts participation at its meetings to the board and committee members, who include up to three sector representatives from each PJM sector, the Members Committee chair and vice chair.
PJM started enforcing the attendance rules in September 2018, according to FERC.
In March 2023, the West Virginia PSC and the market monitor filed separate complaints arguing they should be allowed to attend the committee meetings.
The Organization of PJM States Inc., or OPSI, which represents state utility regulators, Public Citizen, a group of industrial customers and state consumer advocates were among the complaints’ supporters.
Transmission owners, such as AES Ohio, Dominion Energy and Exelon, and the PJM Power Providers Group opposed the West Virginia PSC complaint. Monitoring Analytics’ complaint was opposed by the utilities and trade groups such as Advanced Energy United, the American Clean Power Association and the Electric Power Supply Association. The trade groups said the market monitor’s participation in the Liaison Committee meetings would have a chilling effect on other members’ participation.
In its decision, FERC said the varied elements of PJM’s governance structure provide all stakeholders — including the West Virginia PSC and Monitoring Analytics — with the ability to participate in stakeholder meetings and meet with the PJM board.
No FERC rule nor PJM’s tariff requires that they be allowed to attend Liaison Committee meetings, FERC said.
In a separate statement, Christie, a former Virginia utility regulator, called for giving states a larger role in RTO decision making.
“Simply allowing state regulators or their staff to sit in the room during ‘stakeholder’ meetings (along with a cast of hundreds) or otherwise be ‘consulted’ on some decisions, simply does not represent an adequate role for the states,” Christie said.
In a “fundamental” flaw, RTOs allow special interests to use stakeholder processes to influence the rules and practices that affect their monetary and other interests, according to Christie.
Christie said FERC should have granted Market Analytics access to Liaison Committee meetings.
Besides standing committee meetings, PJM’s rules allow the market monitor to attend “stakeholder working groups, committees or other PJM stakeholder processes,” Christie said.
Further, state regulators depend on the market monitor to understand what is happening at PJM, according to Christie.
“I cannot emphasize strongly enough how much state regulators in OPSI rely upon the [independent market monitor] for unvarnished, incisive and comprehensive analyses on PJM market operations and policies, as well as about planned changes to operations and policies,” Christie said.
FERC should launch a process to consider RTO governance and decision-making procedures, Christie said.
“Especially, given the continuing and growing debate over regional cost allocation for public policy transmission projects in multi-state RTOs, this issue is ripe for a thorough examination in a series of technical conferences or other general proceedings,” he said.
Separately, legislators in five states — Illinois, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia — have introduced bills that would require utilities to report how they vote in their dealings with PJM.
"In West Virginia, people's electric rates have gone up faster than any other state,” West Virginia Delegate Evan Hansen said in a Feb. 6 statement. “We need our electric utilities to explain how their secret votes at PJM are in the public interest."
Similar legislation stalled in Maryland last year after passing the Maryland House.
