FERC Denies Waiver for $2B Chestnut Run Gas Plant
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- FERC denied Advanced Power Services' waiver request for its roughly $2 billion Chestnut Run gas-fired project in Carroll County, Ohio, which was moving through PJM's fast-track Reliability Resource Initiative (RRI) interconnection review.
- FERC ruled that granting the waiver would harm third parties by causing delays in PJM's review of other generator interconnection requests, including those in its RRI — one of its criteria for approving waivers from commission-approved rules.
- Advanced Power Services, a Boston-based independent power producer owned by ArcLight Capital Partners, hit an equipment supply hurdle when it could not acquire the turbines it had planned, and asked FERC to reduce the project's maximum output by 55 MW to 1.245 GW along with its capacity interconnection rights.
- FERC quoted PJM studies finding the equipment changes would "introduce substantial delays to Transition Cycle #2 and have a ripple effect on the remainder of PJM's [interconnection study] cycle schedule."
- PJM's RRI process initially included 51 projects totaling roughly 9.3–11.8 GW; 41 projects totaling 7.9 GW in nameplate capacity remain as the process moves through "transition cycle 2," which has a decision point on Tuesday when some developers may opt to withdraw.
- PJM in April began reviewing the first cycle under its reformed interconnection queue process — a cohort of 811 generating projects totaling about 220 GW — illustrating how tightly packed the pipeline is and why one project's reconfiguration request carries system-wide scheduling consequences.
Why it matters: FERC's denial locks in PJM's strict RRI rule barring changes to project size and capacity interconnection rights, protecting the study timelines for the 41 remaining RRI projects (7.9 GW) and the 811-project reformed queue (about 220 GW). For Advanced Power — backed by ArcLight Capital Partners — the 55 MW cut and reduced interconnection rights are off the table, and the company must find another path to keep its $2 billion Ohio plant shovel-ready before Transition Cycle #2's Tuesday decision point.
