FERC Proposes New Rules to Make Room for Storage in Wholesale Electricity Markets
By Molly Suda and Elizabeth Trinkle
On November 17, 2016, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NOPR”) to amend Section 35.28 of its regulations. The proposed amendment would remove barriers to the participation by electric storage resources and distributed energy resource aggregations in the capacity, energy, and ancillary service markets operated by regional transmission organizations (“RTOs”) and independent system operators (“ISOs”). FERC defines “electric storages resources” as resources capable of receiving electric energy from the from the grid and storing it for later injection back to the grid regardless of where the resource is located on the electrical system. Electric storage resources include all types of electric storage technologies, such as batteries, flywheel, compressed air and hydro-pump. “Distributed energy resource aggregators” are defined as entities that aggregate one or more distributed energy resources (including electric storage resources, distributed generation, thermal storage and electric vehicles) for participation in the RTO/ISO wholesale markets.
Specifically, FERC proposes in the NOPR that each RTO and ISO revise its tariff to (1) establish market rules that accommodate the participation of electric storage resources in the organized wholesale electric markets and (2) define distributed energy resource aggregators as a type of market participant that can transact in the organized wholesale electric markets.
The NOPR includes a number of high-level proposals, and FERC requests comment from interested stakeholders on specific issues related to development and implementation of these proposals. An overview of the NOPR and FERC’s key areas of interest for comment are summarized below.
Comments on the NOPR will be due 60 days from publication in the Federal Register. A copy of the NOPR is available here.