The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Monday rejected NV Energy’s request for permission to let pending interconnection customers withdraw their requests without paying a penalty. The request came in the wake of changes to clean energy tax credit rules and other actions by the Trump administration.
The Solar Energy Industries Association and the Interwest Energy Alliance supported NV Energy’s waiver request, saying it would help remove unviable projects from the utility company’s interconnection queue.
FERC, however, said the request wasn’t “limited in scope,” one of the agency’s criteria for approving waivers from existing rules.
“The requested waiver would establish a new safe harbor process not included in the tariff that is applicable to all interconnection customers that have paid a commercial deposit,” FERC said.
Under the proposal, any interconnection customer in NV Energy’s queue that has paid a commercial deposit could withdraw its interconnection request or terminate its generator agreement during a one-time, 60-day period without penalty and with an immediate return of its commercial deposit, FERC said.
“We find that such a waiver is not limited in scope because it is not limited to a discrete number of interconnection customers with a demonstrated need for relief,” FERC said.
NV Energy had 69 projects totaling about 23.1 GW in its interconnection queue as of Oct. 13, including about 9.3 GW of solar and battery storage hybrid projects and 3.3 GW of geothermal projects. The Las Vegas-based utility company had about 17.6 GW in its interconnection queue at the end of July, including only about 350 MW of geothermal requests.
