FERC last Wednesday turned aside several requests for rehearing of a recent move by the Commission to replace a number of reporting filings currently made by the power industry with a quarterly report detailing power sales transactions, among other things. The federal agency is hoping that this new approach to reporting will make U.S. power markets more transparent and provide a better means to detect and discourage discriminatory practices.

Under the new rule, both utilities and power marketers will file an electric quarterly report with a summary of the contractual terms and conditions of service for all jurisdictional services, including market-based power sales, cost-based power sales and transmission service. The report also will include transaction information for short-term and long-term market-based power sales and cost-based power sales during the most recent calendar quarter.

The report will replace short- and long-term service agreements for market-based electric energy sales, agreements for generally applicable services, such as point-to-point transmission services, and quarterly transaction reports summarizing short-term sales and purchases of power at market-based rates.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission outlined its new approach to power transaction reporting in a late April order. The first electric report under the new rule must be filed at FERC by the end of this month using an interim report.

In response to the rule, several power industry participants sought rehearing of key aspects of the new reporting requirements. Barbara Connors, a FERC spokesperson, noted that the requests for rehearing covered a range of topics, from efforts to stay implementation of the order to concerns over confidentiality of data. Other companies asked for an extension of time to file their first quarterly data at the agency after the July 31 deadline.

But FERC on Wednesday denied all requests for rehearing of its April decision. At the same time, the Commission took steps to clarify what it meant by the term “end date transaction,” which was included in the April decision and has caused confusion among some industry participants.

“They said, for example, if a transaction ends on May 15, 2002, the public utility will show May 15, 2002 as the transaction end date in its July electric quarterly report,” Connors told NGI. “However, if a transaction is not scheduled to end until Oct.15, 2002, the public utility will show June 30, 2002 [end of second quarter] as the transaction end date in its July quarterly report.”

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