Department of Energy January 25, 2013 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Commission issues this final policy statement to clarify and refine its policies governing the allocation of capacity for new merchant transmission projects and new nonincumbent, cost-based, participant-funded transmission projects. Under this policy statement, the Commission will allow developers of such projects to select a subset of customers, based on not unduly discriminatory or preferential criteria, and negotiate directly with those customers to reach agreement on the key rates, terms, and conditions for procuring up to the full amount of transmission capacity, when the developers broadly solicit interest in the project from potential customers, and demonstrate to the Commission that the developer has satisfied the solicitation, selection and negotiation process criteria set forth herein. The Commission is making these clarifications and refinements to fulfill its statutory responsibility of preventing undue discrimination and undue preference while providing developers the ability to bilaterally negotiate rates, terms, and conditions for the full amount of transmission capacity with potential customers. These clarifications and refinements will be implemented within the Commission's existing four-factor analysis used to evaluate requests for negotiated rate authority for transmission service. The Commission will apply this policy statement on a prospective basis to filings received after this issuance.

In this Final Rule, the Commission revises its regulations for assessing the annual charge for use of government lands by hydropower licensees. Each year, the Commission will create an annual per-acre fee schedule by county using a formula with four components: a per-acre land value by county based on a publicly available index of land values; an encumbrance factor; a rate of return; and, an inflation adjustment.