Illinois ICC Issues Proposed Interconnection Rules for Large Generators

ILLINOIS – The Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) continues to work toward developing interconnection standards for large renewable generators. Staff On January 9, 2009 the ICC Energy Division issued a Staff Report and Proposed Rules in which they recommended that Commission issue stand-alone rules covering only interconnections of distributed generation exceeding 10 MVA. The Staff report contains the following notable departures from rule 466 (the IC Standard for systems 10 MVA and under):

• A waiver provision to aid in the enforcement and preservation of the rule;

• Since there is no IEEE technical standard for generators greater than 10 MVA, parties must rely on the technical standards promulgated by the individual utility or the RTO, and, in the absence of published standards, parties must agree to necessary modifications to IEEE Standard 1547;

• The customer must file an interconnection request with the utility, which can be submitted electronically;

• Timelines are more flexible to compensate for the additional complexity of larger generators;

• General requirements for how and when the generating facility is supposed to be physically isolated from the rest of the distribution system and how the utility must have a single point of contact for generators.

More details can be found in ICC Case 08-0481.

On December 18, the PSC also granted a request for extension that requires the proceeding to be wrapped up by July 31, 2009 (it had previously been March 7, 2009).

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