Sponsors
The bill expands access for aggregated demand flexibility to lower wholesale costs and improve grid reliability through a uniform federal rule, at the cost of reduced state regulatory control, implementation expenses, and potential local cost or reliability risks.
Consumers and communities benefit from increased aggregated demand flexibility that can lower wholesale electricity prices and provide additional balancing resources to improve grid reliability.
Utilities and distributed energy resource owners (through aggregators) can participate more broadly in organized wholesale markets by bidding pooled demand flexibility, enabling more distributed resources to contribute to system operations.
A uniform federal rule reduces regulatory uncertainty for market participants by preempting state prohibitions and creating consistent participation rules across regions.
State governments lose some control over market participation rules because the federal rule preempts state laws and regulatory commissions.
Expanded aggregator participation could shift costs or reliability responsibilities in ways that raise local rates or administrative burdens for consumers and utilities if market rules are inconsistent or insufficiently protective.
Utilities and state regulators may incur implementation costs to modify market rules, systems, and operations to accept aggregator bids, imposing costs on utilities and potentially taxpayers.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires organized wholesale markets to accept bids from retail-customer aggregators of demand flexibility for utilities that served >4M MWh, overriding state bans; FERC must issue a rule within 12 months.
Introduced January 22, 2025 by Sean Casten · Last progress January 22, 2025
Requires operators of organized wholesale electric markets (Transmission Organizations) to allow aggregators of retail customers to submit bids that combine customers’ demand flexibility for utilities that distributed more than 4 million megawatt‑hours in the previous fiscal year, even if state law or state commissions currently bar such participation. Directs the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to issue a final implementing rule within 12 months and clarifies use of the Federal Power Act definition of “State commission.”