The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) announced on May 9 that it will hold a commission meeting on May 16 to address the difficulties posed by inadequate alignment between how natural gas and electricity markets operate.
The meeting is in response to a FERC order issued on Nov. 15, 2012, and requires a representative from each regional transmission organization and independent system operator to appear before the Commission. Those representatives will be expected to share each organization’s “experiences from the winter and spring and describe the progress it has made in refining existing practices to provide better coordination between the natural gas and electric industries and ensure adequate fuel supplies.”
As FERC notes, natural gas has been used much more heavily in electricity generation in recent years, and the trend is likely to increase as older coal-powered generation is retired and additional variable renewable resources require backup. Additionally, “recent problems, most importantly, the Southwest outage in February 2011, suggest that more resources must be allocated to planning for the increased use of natural gas to generate electricity.”
The meeting will not be transcribed but will be webcast.
For details on the tensions between the two energy markets, see “Why We Need to Be Cautious in the Shift to Gas,” “ ‘Dash to Gas’ Foreshadows Problems Ahead, Says Report,” and “Pipeline Problems Cloud Future of Gas Power.”
This topic will also be discussed at next week’s ELECTRIC POWER Conference by FERC Commissioner Philip Moeller, a Keynote speaker.
Sources: POWER, GAS POWER Direct, FERC
—Gail Reitenbach, PhD, Managing Editor (@POWERmagazine, @GailReit)
