FERC Gets Busy
October has been a busy month for FERC, with a lot of major rulings on electricity market operation being issued. Part of the activity has been regarding the role of the demand side, and Michael Giberson at Knowledge Problem has a long post addressing the various issues. Other rules, summarized by Tracy Davis at Energy Legal Blog, touch more directly on market power issues.
Something that is likely to result in a good deal of head scratching around California is that FERC now believes that long term contracts are a good thing. If only someone had been able to explain that to California legislators before things got ugly.
FERC has also insisted that market monitoring departments be responsible directly to RTO/ISO boards, not to management. Hopefully that will put an end to any silliness about market monitors being muzzled because their findings reflect badly on the market they are monitoring. FERC has even given market monitors the power to report directly to them if they believe that an RTO or ISO is guilty of misconduct.