News Digest

 

Transmission & ISOs

Grid Management Charges. Faced with mounting complaints from customers who are angry about having to pay for services they don't need, the California ISO proposed a new grid management charge to recover its administrative and operating costs. It would unbundle the new GMC into three "buckets," or service categories—(1) control area services and scheduling, (2) interzonal scheduling (congestion management), and (3) market operations, billing, and settlements—with each category using a different billing determinant.

Charges for the three service buckets would be determined, respectively, by (1) exports and gross load within the ISO, (2) net scheduled interzonal flow per path for a given scheduling coordinator, and (3) the ratio of any SC's total purchases and sales of energy (auxiliary, imbalance, and supplemental) to total purchases and sales by all SCs. .

Software Costs. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission allowed the PJM ISO to use its formula rates under its Open Access Transmission Tariff to bill customers to collect $136 million in costs incurred to acquire information technology and other assets from its transmission owners in order to conduct ISO operations. .