In March 2018, Exelon Generation announced that it intended to retire Mystic units 7, 8 and 9 on May 31, 2022. In April, ISO-NE asked Exelon Generation to continue to operate Mystic 8 and 9 after May 2022, in order to address reliability needs related to fuel security in New England. ISO-NE also pledged to New England stakeholders that it would work to reform the market design to protect regional electric reliability.
On May 1, 2018, ISO-NE initiated a process at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to allow it to keep Mystic 8 and 9 online to preserve electric reliability.
Today, Exelon Generation made a filing with FERC agreeing to keep Mystic 8 and 9 online. As part of its FERC filing, Exelon Generation has made a full financial disclosure to allow stakeholders to fully and transparently review all the costs associated with operating Mystic 8 and 9.
If approved by FERC, both the ISO-NE and Exelon Generation fillings will result in Exelon Generation recovering from regional customers the costs of operating the plant and associated liquified natural gas facility in exchange for an agreement by Exelon Generation to give back to consumers all the capacity and energy revenues that it receives through plant operations. In addition, customers will receive credits for third-party gas sales. Over the last 15 years, ISO-NE has used a similar process to keep plants in operation to preserve electric reliability on multiple occasions.
The total costs of operating Mystic 8 and 9 off set by revenues cannot be calculated at this time because energy prices and, in turn, plant revenues will depend upon the weather in June 2022 and beyond. However, even assuming no energy revenues, the cost to operate the facilities is expected to be less than a $1 per month for the average residential customer. The actual amount that the average customer will pay after offsetting energy revenues will be considerably less.
