Briefly

PUCO Opens Docket on AEP Ohio Capacity Pricing
PUCO has opened a docket entitled, "In The Matter Of The Commission Review Of The Capacity Charges Of Ohio Power Company And Columbus Southern Power Company." Other than the opening docket sheet, nothing is contained in the docket at this time indicating precisely what review PUCO will pursue. Ohio Power and Columbus Southern Power are currently seeking approval at FERC to transition capacity payments under their fixed resource requirement plan from a market-based payment to a cost-based payment, which would result in retail suppliers paying millions of more dollars to the AEP Ohio companies for capacity (see 11/22). Under the PJM tariff, the AEP Ohio companies can ask FERC to set a cost-based capacity price; however, they must use a price established by PUCO if PUCO elects to determine the price, which it has yet to do.

DPUC Asks Attorney General to Pursue Collection of Turris Fine
The Connecticut DPUC has asked the Office of the Attorney General to commence an enforcement proceeding to collect a civil penalty of $360,000 levied against aggregator Turris Associates LLC (see 10/14). To date, Turris has failed to pay the civil penalty, the DPUC said.

Reliant Energy Launches Social Media Ecosystem
Reliant Energy has launched a social media "ecosystem" focused on energy called "empowerme." Developed by Schematic, the empowerme site anchors Reliant's integrated social media presence across sites such as Facebook and Twitter and, "features a broad mix of informative content and user generated discussions - from news on energy innovation to forums for Reliant customers to discuss anything from customer service to their favorite energy-saving tips," Reliant said.

RTOs Report Metrics to FERC
The FERC jurisdictional ISOs and RTOs filed their first report under new performance metrics, available here. As previously reported, the FERC-established metrics do not contain much in the way of measuring RTOs' price impact on retail customers (10/22), though the metrics do include a price-cost markup metric, but the measure merely relies on simulating marginal costs and comparing such estimates to actual system pricing.