Dear Transmission Working Group,

Order No. 1000 is a FERC regulation regarding regional transmission planning and cost allocation. Attached here your information is a link to the FERC Order No. 1000 rehearing order approved by a vote of 4-0 of the Commissioners on Thursday May 17^th, 2012.  The rehearing order is over 500 pages long and primarily consists of rebuttal to various utility arguments that the order is beyond FERC’s authority, not supported by the facts or otherwise unlawful. 

By contrast, SEIA filed for rehearing as part of the Energy Future Coalition and expressed the view that the Order did not go far enough to require truly regional planning and cost allocation.    For example, SEIA asked that the Commission reconsider the very lax Order No. 1000 definition of a planning region. The only clear limit is that “a single public utility by itself may not be a transmission planning region.” So, for example, SCE cannot be its own planning region.

On rehearing FERC did not change its loose planning region definition but instead emphasized the need for “flexibility” in this regard.  For areas such as the Southwest, where there is no regional RTO or ISO, the incumbent public utilities in California, Nevada and Arizona and the CAISO will not be required under Order No. 1000 to develop a single truly regional southwest transmission and cost allocation plan. Instead the  Order will for the most part ratify  status quo regional planning efforts. These existing efforts are certainly of value, however, they appear unlikely, at least in the near to mid-term, to spur the construction of sufficient interstate transmission needed to deliver many remote solar resources to load.