Proposed annual price tag for keeping power plants open is $83 million higher than lawful amount, OPC tells federal regulators
BALTIMORE – A proposed deal to keep the Brandon Shores and Wagner power plants near Baltimore open while transmission facilities are being built will cost customers $332 million more than what it actually costs to keep the plants running, the Office of People’s Counsel said today in a filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Because customers are only supposed to pay actual costs, the settlement should be rejected as unjust and unreasonable, OPC’s filing said.
Talen Energy Corp., the owner of the plants, initially proposed a cost of $215 million per year for the “reliability must run,” or RMR, arrangement to keep the plants open. The proposed settlement would reduce that amount to $180 million per year over four years, or $720 million in total. But according to now-publicly disclosed information, the actual cost of keeping the plant open is just $97 million a year. That is $83 million a year, or 86 percent, less than the proposed settlement amount.
“FERC should reject the proposed settlement as unlawfully providing Talen a windfall of at least $83 million a year,” said Maryland People’s Counsel David S. Lapp. “Talen’s windfall would come directly out of the pocketbooks of Maryland households already burdened with high utility bills.”
OPC protested the proposed settlement on February 18, 2025, (see here for further background), arguing that the amount was inflated by at least $45 million a year over the legally required cost of service. At the time, to support its protest, OPC was legally required to rely on public information, even though it was aware of the FERC staff calculations of lower costs. But since then, in a public filing, FERC technical staff shared the cost information that previously had only been available to litigants in the case, including OPC. That information publicly confirms that the actual costs are $83 million less than the proposed settlement amount. OPC’s response highlights the new public information.
Should Talen exercise the threat it has made in filings in this case—enabled by its market power—to withdraw from the RMR arrangements if the proposed settlement is not approved, the Department of Energy can require the plants to remain available for reliability purposes upon a request of the Maryland Public Service Commission or the regional transmission organization PJM Interconnection, LLC (PJM). On February 18, 2025, OPC asked PJM to submit a request to require Talen to stay on-line should the settlement not be approved, and on March 11, 2025, PJM responded, stating that it would consider seeking such a request to DOE if circumstances warrant.
The Maryland Office of People’s Counsel is an independent state agency that represents Maryland’s residential consumers of electric, natural gas, telecommunications, private water and certain transportation matters before the Public Service Commission, federal regulatory agencies and the courts.
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