Recently in FERC Category

Some energy regulators are pretty much self-proclaimed "geeks" about their subject, but Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff may have taken his penchant for touting energy gadgets to a new level Thursday, as our colleague Tom Tiernan reports.

At a conference on one of his favorite subjects, demand response (which can't help also being about smart grid), Wellinghoff unselfconsciously displayed his home electricity usage -- in real time, as he spoke -- pointing out how different appliances in his home were kicking on without synchronization, creating a usage peak that could be shaped if only his house had better management technology or a home area network.

Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, wasted little time responding to the Wall Street Journal's Monday editorial excoriating FERC about transmission cost allocation. Though his answer isn't in the Journal yet, a draft is in a blog at the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

A few different things came together, probably, to make that happen. The Las Vegas paper's editor, Thomas Mitchell, blogged about the WSJ's editorial (he may have said some pretty strong things in favor of it, but we don't know for sure because his original post isn't there any more.) Wellinghoff is from Nevada, where some years ago he was the state's first utility consumer advocate. And doubtless FERC was already drafting a response to the WSJ; one can imagine the hackles that editorial raised at the commission.

The PJM Interconnection finds itself just where one might expect, given its promotion of demand response as a resource equal to supply. PJM's members now are beginning to struggle with the almost inevitable tension between wholesale and retail regulatory structures and regulation.

It's a tension that begins to get at the long-held observation that wholesale and retail markets really can't be separate, if one wants an effective, competitive marketplace. Of course, given the law that governs the industry -- the Federal Power Act -- the jurisdictional separation looks pretty well cemented. The challenge for PJM, and other organized markets at some point, is to make the wholesale structures and the retail regulation work together.

In some recent orders the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has continued to make good on its promise to find ways to promote the Obama administration's commitment to renewable resources.

Friday, FERC determined that although Southern California Edison had not proven that two transmission projects are needed to reduce congestion or ensure grid reliability, they still qualify for some form of incentive rate treatment because they further the public policy goal of getting more renewable power online.

Bored with naming projects after towns, dams or rivers, one hydropower developer has named about a dozen proposed projects after movies, songs and a Saturday Night Live play-dough character.

A relative newcomer to the hydro industry, Hydro Green Energy, started out in 2002 as a developer of hydrokinetic devices, which derive power from underwater river currents or ocean waves.

The general public, and who can blame it, might not have the best understanding of how the federal government develops energy policy and regulates industries.

Ask someone on the street which office polices gas producers and electric utilities, for instance, and he'll probably guess the Department of Energy. It has a broad title. Surely, that department takes care of everything energy-related, right?

Wrong. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission handles that job.

Through the many years, Representative John Dingell has used blunt questions, and sometimes innocent-sounding ones, to make points with witnesses at the Energy and Commerce Committee.

The other day, if he was being true to historical form, Dingell made a point about the diversity of ways that new transmission facilities are paid for. Incredulity was always one of his questioning strategies, and he employed it effectively, though only briefly, at an Energy and Environment Subcommittee hearing.

Of all energy infrastructure projects, proposals to build liquefied natural gas terminals receive some of the most fervent -- and almost uniformly negative -- comments from citizens groups and local politicians.

The regulatory docket for a terminal under development in Maine is filling up with letters of a very different kind, from residents of Calais, a former mill town on the St. Croix River. Not only has the application been flooded with positive feedback, but much of it comes in the form of handwritten notes, which give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's files some relief from the dryness of countless documents submitted by high-priced energy lawyers.

It may look a lot like an RTO, and act like one, but the system functions being contemplated by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council would not amount to a regional transmission organization that needs federal approval. The West is still the West, after all.

Which may raise the question: Was it necessary for all the other regional transmission organizations to jump through FERC's hoops? It seemed necessary at the time, and it could be that the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic, the Midwest and California wouldn't do it differently. But the Western Interconnection is figuring out a way to take on much of an RTO role without having to suffer FERC's hand.