In March, RENEW Northeast and the American Clean Power Association (ACPA) filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee (FERC) asking the agency to find that ISO New England market rules “provide undue preference to natural gas only resources” and to direct the grid operator to fix its ruled to end that preference.
The allegation is based on how the reliability is weighted for natural gas versus “intermittent” resources like solar and wind. For example, solar is scored lower for reliability based on winter supply issues, wind turbines are lowered through summer months based on projected output, but natural gas is presumed to have 100% reliability despite growing concerns that capacity problems in the Northeast Region would potentially make gas inaccessible under full winter loads in extreme situations. If you recall, natural gas capacity in the region has been a concern for quite some time.
We wrote an article for Oil & Energy in April laying out the details and basis of the complaint, as well as how the capacity auction works and served to generate this complaint. You can read that article in its entirety here: Renewable Advocates Target ISO New England
