Some of the coverage of — and some of AEP’s statements about — the recent motion by the West Virginia Public Service Commission staff to throw out the PATH power line application makes it sound a little like this is some meaningless procedural stuff that nobody should care about.

I’m not sure that I framed it entirely right in either my initial blog post (where this story first broke last week) or in the later print story published in the Gazette.

It’s true, as I wrote, that the WVPSC staff argued this in favor of their motion to dismiss the PATH application or at least stop the clock from running on the commission’s 400-day time limit to decide on the application:

Lawyers for the PSC staff cited a Maryland ruling that rejected the portion of the PATH line proposed for that state. The Maryland ruling leaves the West Virginia PSC without a complete application to study and rule on, according to the new staff legal filing.

But let’s scratch beneath that a little bit (as Bill Howley has already done on The Power Line blog) …  Here’s what else the WVPSC staff filing said:

Time elapses while PATH delays facilitating filing an appropriate certificate application before the Maryland PSC, the information presented in PATH’s Application grows stale and less reflective of a fluctuating economy.

The staff filing continues:

In early November 2009, Moody’s/Economy.com will issue its revised economic forecast, the multi-year “Gross Metropolitan Product.” PJM then uses the November Moody’s forecast and other factors to develop its annual load forecast.

Typically, the PJM annual load forecast is completed each November-December and released each January. PJM then uses the annual load forecast to develop and RTEP, which is typically released each February.

That’s a lot of alphabet soup, but here’s the crucial point:

These combined forecasts will provide crucial information concerning the need for PATH, as this information will be more current than the information contained in the Application.

Continuing along those same lines, the staff filing said:

It is crucial to determine whether the updated information shows that the economic landsape developed differently in the last year than was expected.

And to put an even finer point on it:

For example, the commission recently noted these are difficult economic times for utilities and their customers.

The staff cited one recent filing by Monongahela Power and Potomac Edison (both part of Allegheny Energy, one of the PATH partners) that indicated Allegheny is “showing a loss of Firm Transmission Right revenues.”

What’s that mean?

The implication of reduced Firm Transmission Right revenues is that transmission congestion within PJM is decreasing.  Rather than requiring speculation whether the most current load forecasts will confirm or disprove the information filed with the Application, PATH should provide the parties and the Commission with updated economic forecast and load forecast information.

Further:

Staff is seeking to present the Commission with the most current and accurate information regarding the need for PATH.

The economic landscape may have changed so drastically as to have rendered the information reflected in the Application stale.

On Friday, the WVPSC’s Consumer Advocate Division filed papers supporting the staff’s filing noting, among other things, concerns about the Application containing outdated economic data:

Given the extent to which justification for the proposed transmission line is based on energy demand created outside West Virginia’s borders, it is vitally important that the Commission be able to assess the impact that such alterations in the demand/consumption landscape will have, or already have had, on the need to construct this expensive and disruptive transmission line.

And interestingly, the consumer advocate noted that in a filing with the Virginia utility regulators, PATH has raised the possibility that it would try to bypass state regulators altogether — and seek approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission instead.

That kind of a move would not win PATH any friends among politicians. Even West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin has opposed allowing the federal government to override state decisions on power lines.  And, given a federal appeals court decision, PATH’s options are limited for running to FERC if state regulators don’t give them what they want.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2, 2009 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Power lines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.