Terra-Gen will pay $5.6M to settle CAISO’s market manipulation allegations. (Utility Dive)
According to FERC, Terra-Gen claimed its battery system wasn’t functioning on certain days when CAISO ordered it to buy and store high-priced power. And when CAISO asked Terra-Gen to sell power from the batteries? The company allegedly didn’t report outages or disconnect from CAISO’s automatic generation control.
By the numbers: The scheme, devised by a since-fired VP, spanned 262 hours between July 2020 and April 2022—netting Terra-Gen $681K in profit. Under the settlement, the company will disgorge those gains and pay a $4.95M fine.
Not Terra-Gen’s first controversy: In 2021, Terra-Gen paid around $630K to settle separate allegations involving false information and dispatch deviations at a wind farm.