Blog posts of '2018' 'November'

“What the Hell?” … That was what I muttered after I was finished reading FERC’s Order in answer to the La Paloma complaint (EL18 177-000) about the California market for “Resource Adequacy” (RA). The reaction was not to the decision itself, but rather to the very sloppy and dismissive way the text of the Order treated the record on file. I’m used to not always agreeing with the decisions of the Commission – even when I was on staff there. What is so disappointing are the omissions and the cursory treatment of the record. If one had the money, I contend that this could lead to a challenge in Federal Court on purely procedural grounds. Or is the Commission counting on the fact that parties will just accept their writ?

I began to write last week intending to write about what the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) needs to do to ensure that the market is procuring sufficient “resource adequacy” (RA) capacity to ensure system reliability. However, the unfolding wild fire disaster made such commentary seem trivial at this point. There will be time to deal with the importance of RA and a recent FERC decision of dubious logic about the RA market, but not this week.