On July 27, 2016, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
("FERC" or the "Commission") accepted a
compliance filing from ISO New England ("ISO-NE") that
establishes a ten-percent materiality threshold before ISO-NE will
mitigate a retirement bid in its annual Forward Capacity Auction
("FCA"). In an April 2016 order, FERC previously accepted
a set of proposed revisions to ISO-NE's Transmission, Markets,
and Services Tariff ("Tariff") regarding capacity market
power and FCA prices on the condition that the ISO include a price
mitigation threshold for retirement bids (see April 18,
2016, edition of the
WER).
The Forward Capacity Auction is administered yearly by ISO-NE to
ensure sufficient wholesale electricity capacity three years in the
future from the actual auction date. By bidding into the auction,
sellers commit to provide a certain amount of generation capacity
for the relevant auction period. Sellers may also submit
"de-list" bids, which set a price below
