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FERC approves NERC 2024 assessment and flags interconnection, queue risks
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Summary
At its December open meeting, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved NERC's 2024 performance assessment and several reliability items while commissioners warned that interconnection delays and queue rules are creating risks to resource adequacy.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the North American Electric Reliability Corporation's 2024 performance assessment and took a series of reliability-related actions at its December open meeting, while commissioners pressed for fixes to the interconnection process and queue delays.
Chairman Phillips said the Commission was "approving NERC's 2024 performance assessment, finding that over the last 5 years, NERC has continued to satisfy the statutory and regulatory requirements that FERC entrusted in it by certifying it as the ERO." The approval was taken on the consent agenda and was adopted by recorded vote.
The approval comes amid sharper warnings about future shortfalls. "Half of the United States is at risk of power shortfall in the next decade," Commissioner Rosner said, citing NERC's long-term reliability assessment. Rosner argued the Commission must move beyond piecemeal reforms and noted a recent example in which a 900-megawatt generator was removed from a queue, despite the project's reported readiness to provide a $10,000,000 security deposit the following morning. "The interconnection process is failing us," Rosner said, urging further Commission action to speed interconnections and ensure the right investments.
On related cost-allocation matters, the meeting record reflects an order requiring ISO New England and transmission owners to return to the cost-allocation approach for network O&M costs adopted in Order No. 2003, a finding described during the meeting as resolving Renew's claim that assigning those costs to interconnection customers was unjust and unreasonable.
Commissioner Chang also flagged item E10, a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to adopt NERC reliability standards for inverter-based resources in response to Order No. 901 and open a comment period. He described the docket as the start of a broader stakeholder process to ensure standards protect reliability while being reasonably cost-effective for developers and owners of inverter-based resources.
The Commission's actions at the meeting address different pieces of the reliability puzzle: endorsement of NERC's performance assessment, an affirmed cost-allocation correction for ISO New England, and a NOPR on inverter-based resource standards that will invite public comment. Next steps include the formal comment period on the NOPR and any separate concurrences or statements the commissioners file about specific orders.
