The Price is Right? Demand response on appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court recently heard legal arguments on the fate of FERC Order 745, one of the most highly contested cases on electric utility regulation to come before the High Court in years, if not decades. Order 745 is the controversial ruling, issued in March 2011 by the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, in which FERC decided to treat the resource of demand response as if it were the same as generated power. The case raises issues concerning the nature of and differences between retail and wholesale electric service: what is physical, what is financial, what is energy, what is capacity, and how risk, incentives, and operational limits should govern the business of providing electric utility service. In a new Public Utilities Fortnightly article, SPEER’s CEO, Bob King, helps to provide answers to these and other questions.

Read the full article: Public Utilities Fortnightly, “The Price is Right?” December 2015