Nuclear Energy Institute praises DOE’s proposed resiliency and reliability rules

The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) recently applauded the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) recent notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR), which suggests rules that would compensate certain generation resources for reliability and resiliency attributes.

NEI recently submitted comments on the issues to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which the NOPR asked to develop and implement the rules.

In the comments, NEI Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary Ellen Ginsberg said that the proposed rule is “designed to address two interrelated issues—the premature retirement of power plants that contribute substantially to the resiliency of the electric grid, and the failure of current market pricing rules to adequately value the resiliency attributes that these power plants provide.”

More than 11,000 megawatts of nuclear capacity have retired in recent years or plan to shut down prematurely, according to NEI.

NEI urged FERC to act quickly to implement market reforms.

“The Commission should determine what system risks are not being addressed by current market designs and should require regional transmission organizations to move expeditiously to propose pricing mechanisms that ensure markets will ensure system resilience, and open new proceedings as necessary,” Ginsberg said.