posted on Wednesday, September 03, 2008 9:40 AM
by
Bill Wolf
FERC Revisits Who in PJM Is Going to Pay for Transmission Upgrades
FERC conditionally
approved a contested settlement on the allocation of transmission owner costs
for projects approved through the regional transmission expansion plan (RTEP) of
PJM Interconnection, LLC. The settlement directs how PJM will allocate the
transmission owners’ costs of RTEP upgrades that operate below 500 kV among PJM
members through a "beneficiary pays" approach. That approach will allocate the
cost of a transmission upgrade in proportion to how much the load in each of
PJM's transmission zones is determined to benefit from the upgrade. The
settlement does not, however, address cost allocations of merchant transmission
facilities. The settlement includes a three-year moratorium for revisiting
these cost allocation issues.
Further litigation likely will contest how the costs of merchant transmission
facilities should be allocated.