On July 28, 2023, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC” or the “Commission”) issued Order No. 2023 requiring all public utility transmission providers to adopt reforms to FERC’s pro forma generator interconnection procedures and agreements to address interconnection queue backlogs and prevent undue discrimination for new technologies.
In what FERC Chairman Willie Phillips referred to as “a watershed moment for our nation’s transmission grid,” the new rule includes several areas of reform. Order No. 2023 builds off FERC’s June 2022 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NOPR”), in large part adopting the NOPR but deviating in several key areas after the receipt of approximately 4,500 pages of comments helping FERC inform its decision. Reforms in Order No. 2023 include:
- Implementing a first-ready, first-served cluster study process, where transmission providers will conduct cluster interconnection studies encompassing numerous proposed generating facilities, rather than separate studies for each individual generating facility.
- Speeding up interconnection queue processing by imposing firm deadlines with penalties