March-April 2011

From: Such Great Heights

FERC Order 719

FERC Order 719 requires utilities, ISOs (independent system operators), and RTOs (regional transmission organizations) to allow their customers to collect fees for demand response curtailment, as follows.

“The Commission required each RTO and ISO to: 1) accept bids from demand response resources in RTOs’ and ISOs’ markets for certain ancillary services on a basis comparable to other resources; 2) eliminate, during a system emergency, a charge to a buyer that takes less electric energy in the real-time market than it purchased in the day-ahead market; 3) in certain circumstances, permit an aggregator of retail customers (ARC) to bid demand response on behalf of retail customers directly into the organized energy market; and 4) modify their market rules, as necessary, to allow the market-clearing price, during periods of operating reserve shortage, to reach a level that rebalances supply and demand so as to maintain reliability while providing sufficient provisions for mitigating market power.”