12. Department of Energy and Related Commissions · Notable
Direct RTOs to establish reliability pricing for dispatchable generation
Printed page 402 12. Department of Energy and Related Commissions
“Reform RTOs to require reliability. FERC should direct RTOs to establish reliability pricing for eligible dispatchable generation resources or require intermittent resources to procure backup power for times when they are not available to operate.”
What has happened
- Not started
FERC has not directed RTOs to establish reliability pricing for dispatchable generation or to make intermittent resources procure backup power. It opened a Commissioner-led technical conference on resource adequacy in RTO and ISO regions in February 2025, supplemented it three times through June 2025 and requested post-conference comments on 11 June 2025, but no order, rule or directive followed on the record available.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
Instrument: a FERC order or rulemaking in the resource-adequacy docket, searched by agency and docket rather than by the Mandate’s phrase.
What moved instead was DOE, not FERC: EO 14262 told the Secretary of Energy to streamline Federal Power Act 202(c) orders and to stop critical generation leaving the bulk power system, and DOE has issued a run of emergency orders keeping coal and gas plants online. That is emergency retention, not reliability pricing, so it does not carry this ask: progress is measured on this ask.
FERC orders are not published in the Federal Register, and ferc.gov would not open for us, so any Commission order after the notices cited could not be read.
- Action
- issue
- Object
- regional transmission organization (RTO) pricing rules
- ID
- 1020