Energy Law

FERC Tweaks Open-Access Reforms in Order No. 890-A

By Andrea Kells

In late December FERC issued Order No. 890-A, clarifying and modifying the reforms it made in Order No. 890 to open-access transmission requirements originally established by Order Nos. 888 and 889 and revising the associated pro forma open access transmission tariff. 

In the primary clarifications and modifications, FERC:

• affirmed a tiered approach to calculating energy and generator imbalance charges, while revising the calculation itself:  imbalance charges should be based on the last 10 MW dispatched by the transmission provider for any purpose, rather than the last 10 MW dispatched to serve native load;
• affirmed lifting the price cap on reassignments of transmission capacity for all transmission customers through October 2010 (though the price cap lift may be extended based on a required FERC staff report due in May 2010);
• clarified that the control area of an off-system resource must be identified before it can qualify as a "network" resource, but deferred revising the minimum lead time for undesigating network resources; and
• clarified posting requirements related to processing of service requests and the time frame for implementation of transmission rollover rights reforms. 

As with Order No. 890, transmission providers must submit compliance filings to incorporate the modifications contained in Order No. 890-A?within 60 days of the order's publication in the Federal Register for non-RTO/ISO transmission providers whose facilities are not within an RTO/ISO footprint, and within 90 days for RTO/ISO transmission providers.

Full post as published by Energy Legal Blog on January 10, 2008 (boomark / email).