Delaware Division of the Public Advocate v. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, No. 20-1212 (D.C. Cir. 2021)
Annotate this Case
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission regulates the transmission and wholesale of electric energy in interstate commerce, 16 U.S.C. 824(b), and must approve changes to any rate or charge. PJM, a regional transmission organization that manages an electric grid covering 13 Mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states and the District of Columbia, meets its obligation to ensure sufficient generating capacity by conducting a yearly auction in which electricity suppliers submit offers to be available to provide capacity during a one-year period, three years in the future. The Variable Resource Requirement Curve (VRR Curve) represents the prices that consumers should pay for varying quantities of capacity. The intersection of the VRR and supply curves dictates the amount of capacity committed and the price suppliers are paid. The VRR Curve is set based on the amount of capacity that must be produced to meet peak demand to allow no more than one power outage every decade and how much revenue a hypothetical new generator (Reference Resource) would need to earn in the capacity market to justify construction.
The Commission accepted PJM;s proposed revisions to the capacity market auction mechanism: keeping a combustion turbine plant as its Reference Resource and increasing the value of the Reference Resource’s estimated offer to supply energy by 10% (10% adder). The D.C. Circuit affirmed the approval of the Reference Resource as just and reasonable but vacated the approval of the 10% adder.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.