FERC issued a NOPR yesterday proposing to, "revise its regulations to collect certain data for analytics and surveillance purposes from market-based rate (MBR) sellers and entities trading virtual products or holding financial transmission rights and to change certain aspects of the substance and format of information submitted for MBR purposes." FERC withdrew its Connected Entity NOPR and issued this new NOPR based on extensive industry feedback about the burdensome and costly nature of the previously proposed reporting requirement.

FERC proposes that currently-filed MBR information and new information proposed to be collected in the NOPR will be filed in a "consolidated and streamlined" manner through a relational database. A data dictionary for purposes of reporting to the database was also proposed. Data will be submitted directly to FERC, rather than RTOs/ISOs, as had been previously proposed.

FERC proposes that the definition of Connected Entity ownership information be limited to: "'affiliates,' as defined for purposes of MBR requirements in section 35.36(a)(9) of the Commission’s regulations, that are either: (i) an 'ultimate affiliate owner' of the entity, as defined for purposes of MBR requirements in section 35.37(a)(2); (ii) an entity that participates in Commission-jurisdictional organized wholesale electric markets; or (iii) an entity that purchases or sells financial natural gas or electric energy derivative products that settle off of the price of physical electric or natural gas energy products." The category of “employees” included in the Connected Entity NOPR is replaced with “Trader,” proposed to be defined as, “a person who makes, or participates in, decisions and/or devises strategies for buying and selling physical or financial electric or natural gas energy products.” The category of contractual Connected Entities reported from is revised to refer, "only to entities that have entered into an agreement with a submitting entity that 'confers control over an electric generation asset that is used in, or offered into, wholesale electric markets.'"

The Commission will convene a series of Technical Workshops, with the first to be held on August 11, 2016, for the purpose of reviewing the draft data dictionary attached to the NOPR. Comments on the NOPR are due forty five days after publication in the Federal Register. The full texts of the NOPR, Notice of Technical Conference, and Withdrawal of Connected Entity NOPR are available on the NEM Website.