The Public Utilities Regulatory Authority declined on Oct. 28 to issue a declaratory ruling requested by Fuel Cell Energy Inc. about the applicability of system expansion (SE) gas rates.

PURA staff (Attorney Keenan) told the panel that Fuel Cell Energy’s petition asked whether SE rates apply only to customers added pursuant to a system expansion plan and whether Yankee Gas Services Company (doing business as Eversource Energy) could charge SE rates to Fuel Cell Energy when Fuel Cell Energy had not executed a service agreement. "In this decision, the authority declines to issue the requested declaratory ruling," Attorney Keenan said.

Staff summarized the procedural history: SE rates were approved in 2013 to offset incremental costs for gas system expansion; on March 17, 2020, the owner of the property where Fuel Cell Energy’s facility sits signed a service agreement with Yankee for new rate 30 SE service; and, in April 2022, PURA issued its docket 210824 decision ordering an immediate winding down of the system expansion plan and identifying a discrete set of eligible customers. PURA’s prior rulings on motions 31 and 32, staff said, made the controlling positions clear: if a facility is not an eligible customer under docket 210824 or did not execute a service agreement on or before the date certain identified in that decision, it is ineligible for system expansion plan benefits.

Staff told the panel that Fuel Cell Energy’s facility was listed in docket 210824 as one of Yankee’s projects with a signed agreement but concluded the questions raised in the petition were the same as those previously resolved in motions 31 and 32. For those reasons, the staff recommendation was to deny the requested declaratory ruling.

A motion to adopt the staff decision was moved and seconded. Commissioner Jan Beecher, who joined the authority that morning, stated she had not had sufficient time to reasonably render a decision on the records and abstained from the vote. The remaining commissioners voted to adopt the decision.

The ruling references the definition of "eligible customer" in PURA’s docket 210824 decision as the controlling standard for SE-rate eligibility; the staff presentation cited that prior decision as dispositive for the questions raised by Fuel Cell Energy.