The United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit vacated FERC's decision to withhold over-collections payments from our clients. Agreeing with seven firm clients, the court found that FERC's directive that PJM recoup over $37 million in previously ordered refunds associated with transmission line loss overpayments was arbitrary and capricious. We argued that, because financial market participants pay transmission line loss charges, and for the period at issue also paid for the transmission system through the payment of transmission charges, they were entitled to a fair share of the over-collections paid back to all other participants. The court agreed and found unreasonable FERC's decision to deny an allocation to financial participants while they were paying transmission charges and also challenged FERC's decision to first order such payments and then almost two years later change its mind and seek to claw back the refund amounts. The Court remanded to FERC for reconsideration and explanation. Black Oak Energy, LLC v. FERC, No. 08-1386 (Aug. 6, 2013). The remand also led PJM to agree to a stay of Delaware state court proceedings initiated by PJM to collect the amounts from the three of the marketers.

We are working with Central Asia on creation of regional electricity and gas markets to encourage coordination of cross-border interconnection investments.

We are assisting Via Science to provide reliability services for grid operators by collecting and analyzing data.

The litigation attorneys in our Augusta office successfully defended a mechanical services company in connection with work done on a hydroelectric facility.

On behalf of Beacon Power Corporation, one of our attorneys worked with ISOs/RTOs to develop tariffs for FERC’s approval that established a category of ancillary service providers for companies providing fast-responding Frequency Regulation. As a result of the implementation of these tariffs, flywheels and batteries were permitted to bid competitively for specific ancillary services.

We represent and advise landfill owners in the development of gas-to-energy sites where methane is extracted from the landfill and used to generate electricity.

We are assisting Ørsted (formerly DONG Energy), a Danish energy company and one of the world's leading developers of off-shore wind generation facilities, in connection with the development of off-shore wind generation and related facilities southwest of Martha’s Vineyard.

John Bulman is currently sitting on a Dispute Review Board for a nuclear power plant construction project. Industry professionals are chosen to sit on Dispute Review Boards by the interested parties involved with a construction project for their experience, their independence, their commitment to the project, and their training as mediators and arbitrators. 

The U.S. Agency for International Development has been working with representatives of the Libyan provisional government to restructure its electricity market to attract needed private investment. Although any recommended changes likely will not be implemented until the civil war ends, Pierce Atwood attorney Julia Weller has been asked to draft a new Electricity Market Law for Libya to introduce international best practices, establish a phased introduction of competition and create a new independent regulator. 

Working with our colleagues Mercados-AF we submitted two new laws to the Jamaican government. The consortium, Mercados-AF, was awarded two World Bank contracts to develop and implement new electricity and gas sector policies. We partnered with them to write two new energy acts. We wrote a framework for a new Electricity Act that will foster competition for new power plants on the island. We also developed the framework for a new Natural Gas Act that will govern the import, storage, sale, transmission, and distribution of natural gas – whether in the form of LNG, compressed natural gas, or locally discovered gas. The Ministry of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining of Jamaica is very pleased with the results of both projects.

We advised the Electricity and Cogeneration Regulatory Authority of Saudi Arabia (ECRA) on a variety of legal, regulatory and related issues arising from the decision of the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (K.A.CARE) to introduce 54 GW of renewable energy and 18 GW of atomic energy into Saudi Arabia by 2032, in order to reduce the use of oil for power generation, including cogenerated desalination and water storage projects. We led an international team of consultants (A.S. Azzouni Consultants, Inc.; The Brattle Group; ICF International, NTE Solutions, LLC) on this project, with respect to a variety of legal, regulatory, and market issues including an international Comparison of Markets Study, assessment of the K.A.CARE targets, interconnection, transfer pricing and related grid and market operational issues; legal review and analysis of proposed amendments to the Electricity Law; nuclear, and health and safety licensing issues; and institutional organization, structure, and authority of the regulator.

On behalf of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, we headed a team of legal and technical experts in assessing the legal and regulatory framework for energy efficiency in the industrial sector of Kazakhstan, surveying the energy use of the biggest energy consumers, identifying international best practices benchmarks for energy consumption, and performing a benchmarking of the leading industrial companies in Kazakhstan.