By Ethan Howland of UtilityDive
The PJM Interconnection’s just-held capacity auction cleared nearly 7 GW below its reliability target and only drew roughly 500 MW of new power supply, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Laura Swett said Thursday.
“These numbers compound the alarm bells for a call to action in PJM,” Swett said during the agency’s monthly meeting. “Am I surprised that PJM failed to deliver? No, I am not,” Swett said later during a media briefing.
However, FERC isn’t trying to “target” PJM, she said.
“This is a problem that involves people at the federal level, at the market level, the state level, the registered entities, the market participants … all the utilities, the companies there,” Swett said. “This is a very complex issue that everyone has to coalesce around, coming up with a solution.”
FERC aims to address some of the problems at a technical conference on July 23 focused on PJM’s governance issues.
“The current stakeholder process in PJM is slow where it must be fast, opaque where it must be transparent, and vulnerable to vetoes and agenda control exactly when the region needs immediate action,” Swett said.
From the conference, FERC expects to get “ideas on paper, on a record,” Swett said. “I am very optimistic that certain proposals will be front runners that are grounded in t
