Virginia Mercury outlined Dominion Energy's withdrawal from the regional capacity market, quoting AEE's Jeff Dennis on Dominion’s exit. Read snippets below and the full story here. 

Citing a controversial federal order that made it difficult for renewables to compete against traditional fossil fuel power plants in regional electricity markets, Dominion Energy this spring withdrew all its Virginia resources from the regional capacity market run by PJM, which coordinates the electric grid in all or part of 13 states and Washington, D.C. 

Withdrawal “provides a lower cost option for our customers as we add more renewable resources to the system to serve them,” said Dominion spokesperson Rayhan Daudani. 

The decision, which wasn’t made public until April and was first reported by RTO Insider on May 6, caught many energy industry insiders off guard… 

The capacity market that has been run by PJM since 2006 is designed to ensure that electric generation in a region can meet demand in the long term…

PJM rules say that any capacity market participant electing the FRR option has to notify the regional organization’s Office of the Interconnection “no less than four months” before the capacity auction, which began this week on Tuesday. 

Asked when Dominion had notified PJM, PJM spokesperson Jeff Shields said the organization “does not comment about specific market participants” but that all of those that had elected the FRR “met the four-month advance notice requirement.” 

“There had been rumors that it might happen,” said Jeff Dennis, general counsel and managing director for clean energy business advocacy group Advanced Energy Economy. “I would say I was caught off guard that there wasn’t more sort of public notice.”

Read the full story here.