Briefly

Columbia Gas Seeks Rehearing of Maryland POR Order, Submits Revised Compliance Plan

Columbia Gas of Maryland filed a revised compliance plan relating to COMAR 20.59 and also asked for rehearing of several provisions in the Maryland PSC's September order on an earlier compliance plan. A full report will follow in Matters' October 25 update, but briefly, Columbia is seeking to commence Purchase of Receivables by January 31, 2011, with a discount rate of at least 1.63% (its uncollectible expense from its most recent base rate proceeding), with a specific discount rate reflecting this rate plus administrative costs to be made in a future filing. Furthermore, Columbia asked that it not be required to implement separate residential and non-residential discount rates, due to backoffice system costs. Columbia also asked that several one-time fees charged to individual suppliers not be rolled into the discount rate, since it would be inequitable to charge all suppliers for a service used by an individual supplier (the fees include set-up fees for new marketers, billing correction fees, etc). Columbia said that it agrees to waive the current $7 switching fee. In its September order, the Maryland PSC had ordered Columbia Gas to institute a Purchase of Receivables program by December 1, 2010, with the discount rate set at zero until Columbia justifies an alternative percentage.

FERC Staff Issues RTO Metrics

FERC Staff issued a report governing metrics to evaluate the performance of RTOs. Though Staff generally dismissed calls for a metric measuring the benefits of the single clearing price format, Staff has added metrics on price-cost mark-up and generator net revenues. The price-cost mark-up compares the system marginal price to the system marginal cost. Generator net revenue measures the revenue that a new generator would earn above its variable production costs if it were to operate only when its variable production costs were less than the energy price.

FERC Finds PJM Governance Conforms to Order 719
FERC found that PJM's existing governance procedures and stakeholder processes meet the requirements of Order No. 719, rejecting various modifications proposed by end users and state regulators on issues such as weighted voting, board composition, etc (ER09-1063). FERC suggested, but did not require, that many of the ideas raised by these parties should be further examined by the Governance Assessment Special Team or succeeding stakeholder forums.