On May 15, 2014, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) on open access and priority rights with regard to Interconnection Customer’s Interconnection Facilities (ICIF). The proposed changes in FERC’s regulations will affect generation developers, owners and operators of generator interconnection facilities, and transmission providers. This alert describes the NOPR and identifies some important implications for market participants.

OPEN ACCESS AND PRIORITY RIGHTS ON INTERCONNECTION FACILITIES -

FERC has examined on several occasion issues related to whether developers that build new transmission facilities should have priority rights to use the new capacity and, if so, could such priority rights be granted consistent with the mandate that transmission providers and owners provide nondiscriminatory open access to their facilities. FERC’s long-standing policy has been to subject interconnection facilities to its open access requirements on the same basis as transmission facilities.