Docket Nos. ER21-2878-000, EL22-11-000
So this order denies a complaint and waiver request filed by Salt Creek Solar, LLC (Salt Creek) which, if granted, would allow Salt Creek the opportunity to be reinstated into the SPP interconnection queue. Today’s order is yet another order issued by this Commission in an attempt to clean up the mess created by its decision in Lookout Solar.[1] Salt Creek and Lookout Solar are two peas in the same pod; both were part of the same SPP cluster, both received anomalous study results, and both were unable to resolve such anomalies before being required by SPP to post financial security. Over my dissent, the Commission granted Lookout Solar the unique opportunity to wait to pay its financial security until after the results of the restudy were available. Unsurprisingly, the Commission is now faced with having to grant an untenable number of waiver requests[2] or deny the same relief to other customers, like Salt Creek, that may indeed be similarly situated.
I once heard former Congressman Barney Frank — the FOAT (Funniest of All Time) member of Congress — say that the biggest lie in politics is when a politician says “I hate to say I told you so,” because, as Frank put it, “Everybody loves to say it.”[3]
I told you so.[4]
For these reasons, I respectfully concur.
[1] Lookout Solar Park I, LLC, 176 FERC ¶ 61,100 (2021) (Lookout Solar).
[2] See Motion to Intervene and Comments of Sugar Load Renewable Energy Project, LLC at 2 (arguing that “the Commission should grant Salt Creek the relief it requests and should grant the waiver to all participants in the same DISIS-2017-01 queue cluster that wish to move forward once SPP produces a correct study,” and noting other similarly situated customers in Cluster 9).
[3] See also Jeffrey Toobin, Barney’s Great Adventure, The New Yorker (Jan. 4, 2009) ([Frank said]: “There are three lies politicians tell . . . The first is ‘We ran against each other but are still good friends.’ That’s never true. The second is ‘I like campaigning.’ Anyone who tells you they like campaigning is either a liar or a sociopath. Then, there’s ‘I hate to say I told you so.’ . . . Everybody likes to say ‘I told you so.’ I have found personally that it is one of the few pleasures that improves with age.”).
[4] Lookout Solar, 176 FERC ¶ 61,100 (Christie, Comm’r, dissenting at P 10) (“Most troubling—and potentially harmful—however is the flood of waiver requests or complaints the Commission is opening itself up to by granting this waiver. Given the similarities between Lookout Solar’s circumstances and the inherent unfairness to other similarly-situated customers—including those who were forced to withdraw or were deemed withdrawn for failure to pay—created by today’s waiver, I do not see how the Commission has left itself with any choice but to grant any future waivers or complaints requesting the same relief.”); see also Lookout Solar Park I, LLC, 177 FERC ¶ 61,127 (2021) (Christie, Comm’r, dissenting at P 6) (“I am further perplexed and troubled by my colleagues’ cursory dismissal of the information provided by SPP demonstrating the significant negative impacts the waiver will have on its and other transmission providers queues. If harm to third parties cannot be found in this instance, I question what evidence would be sufficient to satisfy this Commission.”) (footnote omitted), https://www.ferc.gov/news-events/news/commissioner-mark-c-christie-dissent-regarding-lookout-solar-park-i-llc; id. P 11 (“Moreover, there is no evidence in the record that Lookout Solar is ‘unique’ from its fellow cluster members and interconnection customers. . . . [T]he Phase 2 restudy triggered by a late-stage withdrawal likewise may impact the Phase 2 results for all cluster customers.”); Invenergy Wind Dev. LLC, 177 FERC ¶ 61,131 (2021) (Christie, Comm’r, dissenting at P 6) (“Today the Commission relies on semantics to get itself out of the mess it inevitably made by granting the initial waiver in Lookout Solar—the result of which is to put Invenergy (and presumably any subsequent waiver applicants in the cluster) at a patently discriminatory commercial disadvantage to another member of the queue without any rational basis to distinguish the two waiver requests.”), https://www.ferc.gov/news-events/news/commissioner-mark-c-christie-dissent-regarding-invenergy-wind-development-llc.