Commissioner Richard Glick Statement
January 23, 2020
Docket No. ER20-45-000
Order: E-38
Dissent in Part Regarding PJM Interconnection, L.L.C
I dissent in part because we should not duck PJM’s request for guidance. PJM raises a number of important issues that bear, rather directly, on whether the compliance directives in the August 30th Order—an order I supported—can be implemented in a manner that is just and reasonable and not unduly discriminatory or preferential. PJM contends that those directives will cause similarly situated transmission projects to be planned differently—and have their costs allocated differently—based solely on whether the relevant transmission owner conducts its asset management activities through Form No. 715 criteria or instead through Supplemental Projects.1
That, in turn, has the potential to result in significant and inequitable cost shifts among PJM consumers and rampant cross-subsidization.2
Those are serious concerns that deserve better than the back of the hand from the Commission. After all, it is not every day that a public utility urges the Commission to take a hard look at whether its tariff is just and reasonable.3
I would have convened a technical conference to examine these concerns and address how the Commission treats asset management transmission planning more generally. In particular, I would examine whether the potentially inconsistent treatment PJM describes in its request is or can be just and reasonable. I recognize that the issues on which PJM seeks guidance are not inherently straightforward and that, sitting here today, we may not know all the answers. But that is exactly why we should develop the record needed to give those issues the consideration they deserve and to ensure that the Commission is treating asset management activities in a manner that is coherent and reasonably consistent.
By contrast, simply dismissing those concerns as “beyond the scope of this proceeding” does nothing to advance the ball. Instead, we are just punting it back to PJM, which has already told us that it needs guidance from the Commission.4
Doing so all but ensures that these issues will come back to the Commission before we have had a chance to consider the broader legal, technical, and policy concerns raised in PJM’s request for guidance. It is also a recipe to put us back in the very position we find ourselves today with a transmission planner coming to the Commission and stating that it does not know how to implement purportedly conflicting directives in a just and reasonable manner.5
That is no way to run a railroad, much less the transmission system in the country’s largest electricity market.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent in part.
- 11 PJM Compliance Filing at 9.
- 22 Id.
- 33 And, notably, that request is supported by a number of the region’s transmission owners. See Indicated Transmission Owners Comments at 6, 11.
- 44 PJM Compliance Filing at 12.
- 55 Today’s order cites to a number of instances in which the Commission has previously rejected requests for guidance. PJM Interconnection, L.L.C., 170 FERC ¶ 61,049, at P 32 (2020). Fine. My point is not that today’s order is inconsistent with Commission precedent. Rather it is that PJM has identified an important issue that the Commission is choosing to ignore.