Paul Michael Flynn

Practice Details

• Firm Information
  Position

  Shareholder

  Firm Name

  Wright & Talisman, P.C.
• Representative Cases & Transactions
  Cases

  Experience: Representing an RTO in a successful fight alongside FERC in appellate litigation, to allow electric end-users (e.g., shopping malls, colleges,
  factories) to offer electric dem
  reductions into RTO's wholesale market in competition with generators' offers of electric supply increases-resulting in l
  mark U.S. Supreme Court opinion affirming FERC's jurisdiction over that end-user dem
  response.
  Deeply involved in successful development
  prosecution at FERC of major capacity market reforms to ensure better performance of resources committed to meet region's reliability needs, so that millions of customers paying generators to st
  by
  deliver electricity when needed during the h
  ful of peak hours every year get what they pay for.
  Worked closely with client RTO under conditions of extreme urgency to obtain FERC waiver-granted in a single day-of energy market offer price cap, when extreme winter weather drove generation costs above that cap, raising serious reliability
  market operations concerns.
  Representing client RTO in successive highly contentious proceedings on rules to set minimum prices for capacity offers from new generators, seeking a balance between preserving long-st
  ing methods of supporting new entry while protecting against price suppression that could undermine efficient market entry. Representation included successful defense of FERC's approval of RTO's market rules against challenges by a state utility regulatory commission contending FERC had no jurisdiction to set a minimum price for generation sold into RTO's market, as well as by incumbent generation companies arguing the rules should have gone further to limit new entry.
  Representing RTO in multiple major proceedings to establish,
  periodically update, key parameters that are used to clear the capacity market auctions, including an administratively determined dem
  curve
  a detailed estimate of the cost of building a representative new generating plant. Each case has been highly contentious, given the impact on capacity clearing prices,
  highly complicated, involving Monte Carlo market simulation models, detailed expert estimates of new generation construction
  engineering studies. Each case followed different procedural paths, variously involving expert witness technical conferences, an extended multi-party mini-trial settlement process
  an appellate court challenge, but each was successfully resolved.