Posts from — February 2009

On Wednesday, leaders from both the U.S. House of Representatives (“House”) and the U.S. Senate (“Senate”) finished reconciling all of the major provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (“Stimulus Bill”), estimated to cost $789 billion. While some of the energy provisions passed by the House and Senate (see January 23 and January 30, 2009 edition of WER) have changed, the majority remain intact. [Read more →]

On Monday, several regional grid operators and organizations announced the Joint Coordinated System Plan (“JCSP”) report, which estimates that over $80 billion in new transmission is needed to support 20% of the electricity consumed in the eastern U.S. coming from wind generation. 20% is the wind energy contribution that the U.S. Department of Energy (“DOE”) recommended in its Eastern Wind Integration and Transmission Study. [Read more →]

On February 3, 2009, FERC denied a complaint by the Maine Public Utilities Commission (“Maine PUC”) alleging that ISO New England Inc.’s (“ISO-NE”) Open Access Transmission Tariff (“OATT”) compensates generators supplying reactive power for certain capital costs twice. [Read more →]

On January 30, 2009, FERC issued an order approving ISO-NE tariff revisions to integrate the FCM and the generator interconnection process. The modified OATT provisions will offer two levels of interconnection service, one of which will have a deliverability requirement. [Read more →]

On January 29, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC” or “the Commission”) approved a settlement agreement that will allow Duquesne Light Co. (“Duquesne”) to remain in the PJM Interconnection LLC (“PJM”). [Read more →]