Biggest U.S. Power Sale of the Year Is Getting Delayed Again

(Bloomberg) -- The biggest and most closely watched U.S. power auction of the year has been delayed again -- indefinitely, this time.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Thursday ordered the nation’s largest power grid operator to suspend an auction that it had planned to hold in August to secure electricity capacity for more than 65 million people from Chicago to Washington. The annual sale, which generators including Exelon Corp., Calpine Corp. and Vistra Energy Corp. count on to lock in billions of dollars in future revenue, had already been delayed once before from May.

The halt lays bare the gridlock within the federal energy commission as it grapples with hundreds of millions of dollars in out-of-market subsidies that some states are creating to rescue foundering nuclear power plants. While some power generators have warned that these so-called bailouts are skewing the results of auctions, the Trump administration has pressed the commission to aid money-losing reactors and coal units in the name of grid resilience.

Grid manager PJM Interconnection LLC last year proposed changing how its auctions are run to account for states’ nuclear subsidies, but the energy commission rejected that plan and has yet to come up with a fix of its own. “We will not rule prematurely on the issue of any appropriate remedy,” the agency said in its ruling Thursday.

“It’s a remarkable order in that it directs PJM not to conduct the auction, but does not provide specific guidance,” said Ken Irvin, a partner at Sidley Austin LLP.

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PJM said it will honor the commission’s order and that it looks forward to getting additional guidance. In the upcoming sale, PJM planned to secure enough generating capacity to meet customers’ needs for the 2022-2023 year. The auction it held last year locked in at least $8 billion in payments for power suppliers.

The ruling comes just two days after Ohio became the latest state to clear subsidies for money-losing nuclear and coal plants that are battling to remain competitive as cheap natural gas keeps power prices low. New York, Illinois and New Jersey have also approved aid for reactors. “This was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Daniel Grunwald, an analyst at Morningstar.

Vistra said by email that it believes the commission’s ruling was “consistent” with its responsibilities. “The stakes are high for competitive power markets,” the Dallas-based company said. Generator NRG Energy Inc. urged the agency to “act swiftly” to safeguard the market.

William Scherman, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP in Washington, said the agency “should be applauded for not perpetuating an unjust and unreasonable market.”

The commission’s decision to halt the auction was unanimous. Commissioner Cheryl Lafleur, a Democrat, said she hoped the agency could give PJM some clear guidance soon. “More than a year after the commission upended the PJM capacity market with no clear path to repairing it, we have still not acted to resolve the foreseeable and avoidable uncertainty created by our own actions,” she wrote in a statement.

--With assistance from David Baker.

To contact the reporters on this story: Stephen Cunningham in Washington at scunningha10@bloomberg.net;Naureen S. Malik in New York at nmalik28@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Marino at dmarino4@bloomberg.net, Lynn Doan, Pratish Narayanan

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