In Order No. 768, FERC found that the importance of price transparency in jurisdictional markets justified the increased burdens associated with matching transactions reported in EQRs with e-Tag IDs. Several parties requested a rehearing of the e-Tag ID requirement, arguing that FERC overestimated the transparency benefits and underestimated the substantial burdens and costs of requiring e-Tag ID information in EQRs. Those parties and other commenters requested that FERC eliminate or stay the e-Tag ID requirement, the latter of which FERC did to allow it to perform a full assessment of the benefits and burdens.
On rehearing, FERC found that “the initial and ongoing compliance burdens and costs” of the e-Tag ID requirement “may be significantly higher than [FERC estimated] in Order No. 768.” Accordingly, while noting that the e-Tag ID requirement “could improve the usefulness of EQR data,” FERC granted a rehearing regarding the e-Tag ID requirement and determined to not require EQR filers to submit e-Tag IDs for transactions reported in EQRs and for which an e-Tag was used to schedule the transaction, which will save public-utility and non-public-utility EQR filers from shouldering the significant burdens and costs of doing so going forward. The Order on Rehearing did not alter any other EQR-related filing requirements.
1 e-Tag IDs include a subset of the information in complete e-Tags, which are used to schedule physical interchange transactions and contain information about where electric power is sourced and delivered, the parties involved in the transmission of that power, and certain details regarding the timing and volume of, and transmission paths used, for the transaction.
