NEWS: FERC has weighed in on the PJM smart meter debate. 👨‍⚖️

What happened: FERC recently granted a complaint from third-party companies that organize demand-response programs, who claim PJM is violating the Federal Power Act. Their argument? To participate in power markets and pay customers, PJM requires these aggregators to provide smart meter data…but utilities won’t divulge that info, often citing state privacy laws. Yet such laws haven’t blocked VPP participation in other parts of the country. 

The issue: “VPPs are prevented from accessing that information to bring down power prices, even when customers WANT to participate,” wrote Michael Murray, president of Mission:data, a coalition of aggregators that filed the complaint (along with VPP operator Voltus). This logjam strands “gigawatts” of capacity, Emily Orvis, Voltus’s VP of energy markets, told Canary Media.  

What’s next: In cases when these companies can’t get customer info, they want to estimate demand-response impacts through statistical sampling. But PJM claims this would “degrade” data accuracy. Now, FERC is mulling over the next steps. 🤔

While we’re here: The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld FERC’s Order 2023, the agency’s effort to shorten interconnection queues and bring more renewables onto the grid (which faced a legal challenge from grid operators and utilities).