A federal appeals court is scheduled to hold oral arguments in a challenge against FERC for approving ISO New England Inc.’s revisions to capacity market rules regarding resource retirements. The change provides a means for capacity suppliers to price the potential retirement of resources and mitigate possible market power exercised through premature retirements of economic resources. The grid operator found that when capacity supply conditions are tight, a supplier could seek to retire an economic resource to reduce available supply and increase prices to benefit the rest of its resource portfolio. Petitioners argue that the rule allows ISO-NE rather than the supplier to file retirement bids, depriving capacity suppliers of rate-filing rights under section 205 of the Federal Power Act. The case is Exelon Corp. v. FERC (17-1275).

The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is scheduled to receive comments on the environmental impact statement for Deepwater Wind South Fork LLC’s 96-megawatt wind farm offshore Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Local construction is planned to start in 2021 with the full project coming online in 2022. Denmark-based Ørsted A/S entered into an agreement with U.S.-based D.E. Shaw Group to buy a 100 percent stake in Deepwater Wind, resulting in a combined portfolio of 8.8 gigawatts of offshore wind in the U.S. Deepwater Wind’s portfolio amounts to about 3.3 gigawatts, which comprises offshore wind projects in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland and New York. Ørsted’s wind portfolio in the U.S. amounts to around 5.5 gigawatts.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration will issue its Monthly Energy Review, providing data on energy production, consumption, prices and trade. Among recent trends, retail electricity prices for customers enrolled with competitive suppliers in the New England region are less volatile compared to wholesale power prices, although temporary price hikes occur when wholesale prices experience the largest increases. All the New England states except Vermont have deregulated electricity markets, where companies compete to generate and sell wholesale electricity to retail suppliers, and customers pay for electricity in the supply portion of their bills. (Previous Report)

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is due to issue an environmental assessment for Northern Natural Gas Company’s Northern Lights 2019 Expansion Project and the Rochester Project in Minnesota. The projects consist of new pipeline and compression facilities that would together increase natural gas transportation service by about 138,504 dekatherms per day in Minnesota. The Northern Lights 2019 Expansion is estimated to cost about $158 million and the Rochester project about $31.42 million. A final decision is due by Feb. 19, 2019. (CP18-534)