The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Oct. 8 denied access, even under a nondisclosure agreement, to confidential information concerning capacity suppliers seeking to remove themselves from ISO New England's forward capacity market.
A consumer watchdog group contended that the decision would stymie stakeholders' evaluation of ISO-NE's winter fuel security plan, but FERC concluded that the need to protect sensitive, resource-specific information outweighed the interests of parties seeking access to that information.
The information at issue was contained in a June 28 rate filing (FERC docket ER19-2312), in which ISO-NE laid out the delist bids and substitution auction test prices submitted by capacity suppliers for its 14th forward capacity auction, or FCA, scheduled for February 2020 for the 2023-24 delivery year.
Delist bids specify the price below which a supplier does not want to assume a capacity supply obligation, with a "permanent" delist bid signaling the company's desire to exit from ISO-NE's capacity market and a "retirement" delist bid signaling that a resource wants to exit all ISO-NE markets. Under ISO-NE's new two-stage FCA that gives aging generators a chance to retire and hand off their capacity supply obligation to a state-subsidized resource, a supplier can offer a test price reflecting its estimate of the price at which it would not earn enough revenue to cover its going-forward costs.
Privileged information
The rate filing included, on a confidential basis, the internal market monitor's determinations regarding the delist bids and test prices and supporting documentation for each determination.
Because the filing has privileged information on the cash flows, expected capacity payments and opportunity costs of market participants, as well as sensitive commercial and financial information that the IMM uses to accept or adjust suppliers' delist bids and test prices, ISO-NE made a case for barring access to that data "to safeguard the FCA's competitiveness and prevent the exchange of [that] information among competitors."
Meanwhile, consumer group Public Citizen sought access to all of that information, subject to execution of a nondisclosure agreement, or NDA. It contended that access to privileged components of ISO-NE's rate filing would allow stakeholders to determine if an inventoried energy program that ISO-NE crafted as a short-term fix to fuel security issues expected to arise during the 2023-24 and 2024-25 winters was just and reasonable.
That program, which went into effect by operation of law when FERC in August lacked a quorum to act on the filing (ER19-1428), will compensate resources, during the winters covered by the next two capacity auctions, for up to three days' worth of inventoried energy during periods when the region's energy security is most likely to be stressed. The financial incentive aims to increase inventoried energy levels in the region beyond what would otherwise occur absent the program and reduce the likelihood that resources with inventoried energy would pursue retirement before ISO-NE could implement a full, market-based solution to address the region's fuel security challenges.
FERC, however, found that disclosure of the information sought, even under an NDA, was not appropriate given that the "information would remain commercially sensitive beyond the current FCA and that disclosure of the privileged information would be harmful in the context of future FCAs." The Oct. 8 order therefore granted ISO-NE's request for a waiver of commission regulations that would have required the grid operator to submit an NDA form that stakeholders could use to access privileged data.
The commission cited its previous refusals (ER14-1409, ER17-2110) to release confidential information on bids and results from FCA 8 and FCA 12 that parties unsuccessfully fought to obtain. The "information that Public Citizen seeks is the same type of information that the commission has determined could harm the competitiveness of the FCM if revealed and therefore should not be disclosed," it said.
The Oct. 8 order also accepted the rate filing, effective Aug. 27. The public version of the filing revealed that 22 permanent delist bids and 11 retirement delist bids were submitted totaling 279 MW.
Jasmin Melvin is a reporter with S&P Global Platts. S&P Global Market Intelligence and S&P Global Platts are owned by S&P Global Inc.
