Commissioner Richard Glick Statement
March 10, 2020
Docket No. ER18-1770-002
Dissenting Regarding New England Power Pool Participants Committee
I dissent from today’s order because I believe that the underlying order correctly balanced the harms and benefits of ISO New England’s proposal. As that order explained, ISO New England’s Market Monitor identified a flaw in the method used to calculate a generator’s remaining economic life as part of the Market Monitor’s review of that generator’s De-List Bid1
. Specifically, the calculations assumed that the generator would be willing to continue operating at an annual loss until all its future losses offset all its future profits2
—i.e., the calculations assumed that the generator is not profit-maximizing3
. Of course, in reality, a generator is far more likely to stop operating once it starts making an annual loss, rather than blunder ahead losing money.4
It should go without saying that such irrational assumptions should be promptly remedied, at least absent a showing of significant harm to the market.
Nothing in this record—or today’s order on rehearing—makes that showing of harm. Instead, the Commission relies on speculation about what might have happened had the method for calculating economic life been rational all along.5
In particular, the Commission notes that more generators might have sought to potentially retire had they known about the plan to fix the irrational assumptions before submitting their De-List Bids.6
Even assuming that is right, I fail to see how it justifies rejecting ISO New England’s filing to fix those irrational assumptions. If anything, that point only underscores the need to make the fix.
Finally, I note that nothing in today’s order precludes ISO New England from refiling substantially the same provisions tomorrow. Today’s order, as I understand it, is concerned only with the timing of ISO New England’s previous filing and not its merits.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.
- 11 ISO New England Inc., 165 FERC ¶ 61,088, at P 4 (2018) (Order); see also id. PP 2-3 (discussing the Market Monitor’s review of De-List Bids).
- 22 Id. P 4.
- 33 Id.
- 44 Id.
- 55 Order, 165 FERC ¶ 61,088 at P 17. But see Astoria Generating Co. L.P., 151 FERC ¶ 61,043, at P 47 (2015) (dismissing concerns about resources’ counterfactual bidding behavior as “impractical and speculative”).
- 66 Order, 165 FERC ¶ 61,088 at P 4.