Posts from — August 2010

Beginning in July of this year, PJM noticed that some of its market participants appeared to be taking unfair advantage of certain of its power market settlement rules.  These rules permit non-firm transmission customers to receive an allocation of the PJM marginal losses surplus which exceeds such participants’ cost of transmission service.  FERC has announced that it will conduct a non-public, formal investigation – with subpoena power – to determine whether this behavior constitutes unlawful market manipulation.  This investigation will have an obvious and direct impact on PJM market participants because FERC’s Office of Enforcement will move swiftly to collect information and undertake its investigation in earnest.  [Read more →]