US FERC grants BPA extension to respond to Northwest oversupply complaint
Hilary Costa, Platts, www.platts.com 21 June 2011
Hilary Costa, Platts, www.platts.com 21 June 2011
The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Monday granted Bonneville Power Administration’s request for an extension to the comment period on a complaint Northwest wind generators brought against it.
FERC agreed with BPA that the comment period can end July 19, instead of July 5 as originally proposed, giving BPA two additional weeks to respond to the complaint.
In its motion, BPA had said that the large number of legal and factual issues raised in the complaint merited a longer response period.
Iberdrola Renewables, PacifiCorp, NextEra Energy Resources, Invenergy Wind North America and Horizon Wind Energy filed the complaint, which argues that BPA is discriminating against certain generators in violation of the Federal Power Act–including Section 211A–with its environmental redispatch curtailment practice.
The complaint also says BPA is disrupting existing interconnection contracts and that the federal power agency should file a transmission tariff for FERC approval within months.
Since May 18, BPA has invoked environmental redispatch to manage an oversupply of power, curtailing thermal and wind generation and replacing it with excess federal hydropower. BPA provides the replacement power at $0/MWh, but will not sell it at negative prices–where sellers pay buyers to take the power they are producing.
Wind interests have protested the policy, as they stand to lose production tax credits and renewable energy certificates worth as much as $50/MWh when they are curtailed.
Several stakeholders, including the Grant Public Utility District, the Pacific Northwest Generating Cooperative, the Western Public Agencies Group and Puget Sound Energy, also filed motions on Monday to intervene in the proceeding.
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/06/22/us-ferc-grants-bpa-extension-to-respond-to-northwest-oversupply-complaint/