Vineyard Wind Files Motion to Stay New England Power Auction

Vineyard Wind LLC has filed an emergency motion to stay the conduct of the ISO New England (ISO-NE) LLC Forward Capacity Auction with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

The developer of the 800MW Vineyard Wind offshore wind project has requested that the procedure, which started on 4 February, is halted until FERC responds to a petition sent by Vineyard Wind in December 2018 that would enable the project to participate in the auction.

The alternative would be to vacate and rerun the auction upon FERC’s approval of the waiver sought in the petition, the developer said.

”Given the exigent circumstances, and to prevent irreparable harm, Vineyard Wind requests that this motion be immediately granted subject to a comment date of February 5, 2019 for subsequent final Commission action,” Vineyard Wind said in the motion.

Back in November 2018, ISO-NE and the New England Power Pool Participants Committee (NEPOOL) submitted a joint filing to make changes to ISO-NE’s Transmission, Markets, and Services Tariff, including a clarification of the Tariff language to allow for offshore wind resources with an interconnection in an ISO-NE state to participate in the auction as Renewable Technology Resources (RTRs).

On 29 January 29, FERC accepted the proposed Tariff changes, including the language affecting offshore wind resources.

ISO-NE and NEPOOL then requested that Vineyard Wind “receive a waiver from the Commission of the application of certain Tariff provisions” establishing the proration of RTRs should the RTR capacity exceed the capacity cap within the Tariff. Vineyard Wind requested the same on 29 January.

After FERC failed to respond to the requests for a waiver, ISO-NE issued a notification stating that the auction would not include Vineyard Wind as an RTR due to the fact that “the members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission did not issue an Order . . . on the waiver request submitted by Vineyard Wind.”

Vineyard Wind LLC is a joint venture partnership between Avangrid Renewables and the Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners.