On April 14, 2023, PJM Interconnect asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to help lead discussions to resolve eight pending complaints against the grid operator by power plant owners over penalties for failing to meet their capacity obligations during December 2022 Winter Storm Elliott.[1] At the peak of Winter Storm Elliott, about 57,000 MW were offline in PJM’s footprint.[2] About 63% of all outages were natural gas-fired power plants, 28% coal, 4% oil, 2% nuclear, 1% hydroelectric, and about 1% other. According to a fact sheet released by PJM, about 200 market participants face roughly $1.8 billion in performance penalties for falling short of their required power deliveries on December 23 and 24.

In the request, PJM said FERC should appoint one or more settlement judges to help PJM, the complainants, and the intervenors resolve as many of the non-performance charge disputes as possible. PJM said it plans to answer each complaint and show that in each case, the assessed non-performance charges follow its tariff; that the relevant tariff provisions are just and reasonable, assuming they are even open to challenge; and that PJM properly invoked its emergency procedures. However, PJM noted that it recognizes there are benefits to a quick resolution to the dispute.

[1] https://elibrary.ferc.gov/eLibrary/filelist?accession_number=20230414-5132&optimized=false

[2] https://www.pjm.com/-/media/markets-ops/winter-storm-elliott/faq-winter-storm-elliott.ashx