Energy trader Monterey Enterprises, LLC and affiliate, Monterey MA, LLC wrote to the PJM board operator concerning a dispute resulting from the treatment of congestion, with Monterey Enterprises alleging that, "PJM's significant informal price corrections are destabilizing to the Market."

Monterey had sought informal dispute resolution concerning two real-time price challenges related to instances on June 27, 2016 and July 1, 2016 where Monterey alleged PJM modified initial 5-minute prices related to the LaSalle-Plano outage event.

As described by Monterey, "On Wednesday, June 22, 2016 and Thursday, June 23, 2016, the 5-minute shadow prices for LINE 345KV 20BRAID-66E FRN 2003 reflected significant congestion. That significant congestion continued for the 5-minute shadow prices of the LINE 345 KV 1 LASALL-20 BRAID 0103 on Friday, June 24, 2016. Based on the 5-minute pricing signals it received from the market, Monterey took positions through the weekend. On Monday, June 27, 2016, PJM revised out all congestion in the Real-Time prices for the LINE 345 KV 1 LASALL-20 BRAID 0103 from Friday, June 24, 2016, while simultaneously continuing to price LINE 345KV 20BRAID-66E FRN 2003 with significant congestion. The following days saw some hours of congestion revised with the Real-Time File posting, while other hours of congestion were not revised. These revisions, as well as the confusion resulting from some periods revised and others left standing, resulted in significant lost profits to Monterey and other market participants," Monterey alleged

"Monterey is also concerned that the volume of PJM's price corrections - and the associated cost to market participants - has significantly increased in 2016, thereby creating greater uncertainty with respect to market prices and outcomes. For example, PJM once again made significant price corrections on August 22, 2016, which do not appear to follow the Manual 11 provisions, and which caused financial harm to the market. Monterey has also performed calculations of the frequency and dollar impact of changes to the Marginal Congestion Component (MCC) averages. Both the number of changes and dollar impacts of such changes are trending upwards with 2016 showing record changes. Monterey provided its data regarding MCC changes to PJM staff during the dispute resolution process. For example, the five-year (2011-2015) average of the dollars of MCC change per year is $985,000. In 2016, however, PJM experienced MCC changes of approximately $2.2 million," Monterey alleged

Monterey also alleged that PJM Staff refused to enter into tariff-required arbitration, allegedly in violation of sections 1.8.1 and 12 of PJM's tariff

See Monterey's letter here