FERC Reduces Constellation Penalty in CAISO

FERC granted Exelon and Constellation NewEnergy, Inc. a limited, one-time waiver of section 37.11.1 of the California Independent System Operator Corporation (CAISO) tariff that was in effect prior to October 1, 2011, to avoid a penalty of $282,000 for untimely submission of settlement meter data.

The penalty was reduced to $42,000, consistent with the new, less burdensome penalty mechanism in place under the currently effective tariff section 37.11.1.

Exelon stated that in August 2011, its internal review of the settlement quality meter data submitted to CAISO, pursuant to section 10.3.2.1, revealed errors in the process used to collect and transmit customer account data to Exelon's third-party aggregator. Exelon explained that the error caused it to underreport usage for the customers that were affected from June 1, 2011 through July 17, 2011. Exelon further stated that it resubmitted corrected data to CAISO on September 10, 2011 for the trading days in question.

On September 30, 2011, FERC accepted CAISO tariff revisions regarding the calculation of the Inaccurate Meter Data Penalty in section 37.11, with an effective date of October 1, 2011. Under the revised section 37.11, market participants that fail to timely submit accurate and complete settlement meter data are subject to sanction of $1,000 for each trade day corrected

In granting the waiver, FERC said that the tariff violation in the instant case resulted from an unintentional single error that affected the aggregate settlement data for a number of trading days. The waiver would not have any undesirable consequences because the corrected data avoided unaccounted for energy from being charged to the market, FERC said

Docket: ER12-1994