On November 2, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC or the Commission) rejected challenges to its 2012 order on “simultaneous exchange transactions.” Under the order, affiliates may enter into simultaneous exchanges as long as they obtain prior approval from FERC and FERC finds that there are not attempts to circumvent transmission service regulation or concerns of affiliate abuse or separation of functions violations. FERC also provided key clarifications to its policy by explaining the types of transactions included within or excluded from the requirement of prior FERC approval.
Simultaneous exchange transactions occur when a pair of wholesale power transactions are simultaneously arranged (i.e., are part of the same negotiations) between the same two counterparties such that Party A sells an electricity product to Party B at one location and Party B sells a similar electricity product to Party A at a different location with both transactions having an overlapping delivery period. The simultaneous exchange is the overlapping portion (both in volume and delivery period) of these wholesale power transactions.