Dive Brief:

• About 60 large industrial, commercial and institutional energy consumers have asked federal regulators to toss out a reliability support agreement aimed at keeping the Ginna Nuclear Power Plant in New York operating.
• The utility and NYISO say the nuclear facility must keep operating to ensure grid reliability. The agreement between the Ginna operating company and Rochester Gas and Electric would add more than $200 million each year in costs and would require the plant to continue operating until at least September 2018, when a transmission project to enhance reliability is expected to be finished.
• The group said that if regulators approve the reliability agreement there will be substantial out-of-market payments affecting the New York wholesale electricity markets.

Dive Insight:

A group of large energy consumers say an arrangement to keep the 583-MW Ginna nuclear facility operating would saddle them with millions in additional costs.

Ginna and RG&E proposed a reliability support services agreement last month to keep the facility running, but according to the customer group the arrangement "would obligate RG&E (and, presumably, its customers) to subsidize the continued operation of Ginna’s nuclear generation facility ... at an annualized cost of $210 million, net of certain facility revenues."

Both FERC and the New York Public Service Commission must sign off on the proposal.

The group urged FERC to reject the arrangement, saying it could result in "potentially-staggering rate impacts to RG&E’s retail electric customers."

"Ginna has never demonstrated, or even announced, a definitive intent to retire the facility, but nevertheless seeks exorbitant out-of-market payments to continue operating the facility for reliability purposes," the group told FERC.

R.E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant LLC is a subsidiary of Constellation Energy Nuclear Group, and the company has said the facility lost approximately $100 million from 2011 to 2013.