Those of us who look wistfully and admiringly upon the Illinois Commerce Commission as a staunch defender of the electric consumers they are mandated to protect because our own Consumer Advocate sees himself as someone who must balance the rights of consumers with the wants of investor owned utilities, now have one more reason to want to move to Illinois.
The ICC filed a motion to intervene in PJM's recent cost allocation filing at FERC that added a whole bunch of new RTEP projects approved earlier this month. At issue are three new allocations for 500kV projects located in Pennsylvania and Virginia. The ICC notes that ratepayers in Illinois will pay approximately $26M for these projects, but will receive no benefit.
"Given that the three projects are to be constructed in Virginia and Pennsylvania, it is a reasonably safe assumption that the primary beneficiaries of the projects are not distributed evenly across the PJM footprint. Yet, PJM’s load-ratio share approach allocates the costs of these projects as if they were."
"A second flaw in PJM’s load-ratio share cost allocation approach is that it typically results in customers in distant zones like ComEd paying more than the customers in the local zone where the facility is located. In this case, electricity consumers in the ComEd zone would pay a higher share of the cost of the three projects than the customers in any of the transmission zones in which facilities are to be located (14.64 percent for the ComEd zone versus 5.53 percent for APS, 1.92 percent for Metropolitan Edison and 12.45 percent for Dominion) simply because the ComEd zone’s non-coincident peak load is higher than the non-coincident peak load."
The ICC requests that FERC dismiss cost responsibility for the ComEd zone, or "hold its consideration of this part of PJM’s May 2 Filing in abeyance until the Commission addresses the requests for rehearing of its order responding to the remand from the United States Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit."
Ut-oh, FirstEnergy and Dominion! Looks like your transmission projects have run off the rails already!
How completely delightful!
The ICC filed a motion to intervene in PJM's recent cost allocation filing at FERC that added a whole bunch of new RTEP projects approved earlier this month. At issue are three new allocations for 500kV projects located in Pennsylvania and Virginia. The ICC notes that ratepayers in Illinois will pay approximately $26M for these projects, but will receive no benefit.
"Given that the three projects are to be constructed in Virginia and Pennsylvania, it is a reasonably safe assumption that the primary beneficiaries of the projects are not distributed evenly across the PJM footprint. Yet, PJM’s load-ratio share approach allocates the costs of these projects as if they were."
"A second flaw in PJM’s load-ratio share cost allocation approach is that it typically results in customers in distant zones like ComEd paying more than the customers in the local zone where the facility is located. In this case, electricity consumers in the ComEd zone would pay a higher share of the cost of the three projects than the customers in any of the transmission zones in which facilities are to be located (14.64 percent for the ComEd zone versus 5.53 percent for APS, 1.92 percent for Metropolitan Edison and 12.45 percent for Dominion) simply because the ComEd zone’s non-coincident peak load is higher than the non-coincident peak load."
The ICC requests that FERC dismiss cost responsibility for the ComEd zone, or "hold its consideration of this part of PJM’s May 2 Filing in abeyance until the Commission addresses the requests for rehearing of its order responding to the remand from the United States Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit."
Ut-oh, FirstEnergy and Dominion! Looks like your transmission projects have run off the rails already!
How completely delightful!
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