Market Transparency: Lessons from the Green Mountain Settlement

The landscape of US energy regulation is shifting. With the appointment of Laura Swett as the new Chair of The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the industry is closely watching how enforcement priorities might evolve. As highlighted in FERC’s 2025 Enforcement Report, there is a clear focus on market transparency and the accuracy of communications with Regional Transmission Organisations (RTOs).

A recent settlement involving Green Mountain Power Corp (Green Mountain) serves as a timely reminder of these expectations.

The Case: A Failure to Report

FERC recently concluded an enforcement action against Green Mountain regarding its Bolton Falls Dam project in Vermont (see here for the FERC Order). The case focused on violations of the ISO New England (ISO-NE) Tariff and Market Behaviour Rules.

Between September 2022 and December 2024, the project was continuously unavailable due to maintenance and turbine replacements. While Green Mountain correctly offered the units as "unavailable" in the daily energy markets, they failed to properly record these outages in the ISO-NE Control Room Operations Window (CROW).

The figures from the 14-page Order are illuminating:

• The project was offline for a total of 823 days.
• Green Mountain only reported outages in the CROW system for 29 of those days.
• For 712 days (over 86% of the period), no outages were reported in the required system.

The Financial and Regulatory Impact

Because the outages were not properly documented, Green Mountain received over $94,000 in capacity and reconfiguration auction payments that they were not entitled to receive.

To resolve the matter, Green Mountain admitted to the violations and agreed to:

• A civil penalty of $32,500.
• Repayment of $94,833.26 to ISO-NE.
• At least two years of compliance monitoring and three years of annual staff training.

Looking Ahead

As noted in recent regulatory updates, both FERC and the CFTC are sharpening their teams and tools for 2026. This settlement highlights that even when a resource is correctly offered as "unavailable" in one system, failing to follow technical reporting requirements in another can lead to significant penalties.

Under Chair Swett’s leadership, we expect FERC to remain vigilant regarding market integrity, particularly given her career background in FERC enforcement. For market participants, the message is clear: internal controls must ensure that physical reality always matches regulatory reporting across all platforms and in a timely manner.