PJM opposes $2B Ohio gas plant waiver at FERC
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- PJM Interconnection filed a June 18 protest at FERC opposing a waiver request from Advanced Power Services that would let its ~$2B Chestnut Run gas-fired project in Carroll County, Ohio, remain in the grid operator's fast-track Reliability Resource Initiative (RRI) interconnection review.
- The RRI process, which initially drew 51 projects totaling about 11.8 GW, was designed for shovel-ready projects and barred changes to a project's size and its Capacity Interconnection Rights.
- Advanced Power Services (owned by Boston-based ArcLight Capital Partners) sought the waiver after GE Vernova's HA.03 turbine model — the one it originally committed to use for a May 2030 in-service date — became unavailable, pushing the timeline out by at least two years.
- Advanced Power now plans to switch to GE Vernova's HA.02 turbine, which would reduce the plant's maximum output by about 550 MW but allow it to come close to the originally planned online date.
- PJM argued the waiver request fails to meet FERC's criteria (limited in scope, resolves a concrete problem, no undesirable consequences) and that Advanced Power could instead apply through the Expedited Interconnection Track, which FERC approved on June 9.
- In a June 23 response, Advanced Power countered that PJM failed to show the waiver falls short of FERC standards and warned that denial would delay more than 1.2 GW of firm, dispatchable capacity by roughly two years, asking FERC for a decision by July 1.
- Without the waiver, the Chestnut Run project could be ineligible for PJM's upcoming reliability backstop auction, which will likely require projects to be online by June 1, 2032, per the waiver application.
Why it matters: For Advanced Power, a FERC denial could push 1.2+ GW of new firm capacity out of PJM's upcoming reliability backstop auction (online by June 1, 2032), delaying the project by roughly two years at a moment when PJM itself acknowledges 'unprecedented resource adequacy challenges.' The ruling will also set a precedent for how strictly PJM enforces its RRI rules against other developers that hit turbine-supply or other snags after entering fast-track review.
