Utility Dive

Expanding the MOPR within a single-state ISO is even more of an overreach by FERC than it was in the multi-state PJM, according to Ari Peskoe, director of Harvard Law School’s Electricity Law Initiative.

If FERC were to establish a record, there is no “inherent jurisdictional bar” to prevent the commission from issuing a carbon price without a direct request from grid operators, Ari Peskoe, director of Harvard’s Electricity Law Initiative, said. Others said it was possible, but tricky without a legislative mandate.

“This ultimately harms renewable energy generators because they lose [these] long-term fixed price contracts and other benefits they had under the old rules,” Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program, told Utility Dive.

Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program, who also filed comments opposing the NERA petition, said the group’s reply “badly mischaracterizes its opponents’ arguments and therefore is not informative.”

“The wild card here will be the number of utilities that have already declared their intent to file something here, and I don’t know which side of this they’re going to come down on,” Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School, told reporters last week.

Competitive power suppliers “finally got what they wanted and apparently now recognize what was obvious to the MOPR opponents – discarding state policies is not a durable solution,” Ari Peskoe, Director of Harvard University’s Electricity Law Initiative told Utility Dive in an email. “If one state’s utilities exit, all that the merchants gain from the MOPR expansion disappears.”

The technical feasibility of such a shift is not clear, Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program. told Utility Dive. Most rooftop solar would likely fall under the jurisdiction of PURPA as a qualifying facility, and therefore be priced based on the avoided cost of generating that power, argued the petition.

The argument that FERC’s failure to define the relationship may open a loophole for market manipulation is “plausible,” Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard told Utility Dive in an email, though he’s not sure how real and present that threat may be.