FERC-500, Application for License/Relicense for Water Projects with More than 10 Megawatt (MW) Capacity

On October 23, 2018, the America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2018 (AWIA) was signed into law. The AWIA, among other things, requires the Commission to establish an expedited process for issuing and amending licenses for qualifying facilities at existing nonpowered dams and for closed-loop pumped storage projects. Under the expedited process, the Commission will seek to ensure that a final decision on a license application will be issued no later than two years after the Commission receives a completed application for a license. Therefore, to comply with the AWIA, the Final Rule amends the Commission’s regulations governing hydroelectric licensing under the Federal Power Act (FPA) by adding a new Part 7 that establishes an expedited licensing process for qualifying facilities at existing non-powered dams and for closed-loop pumped storage projects. As directed by FPA sections 34 and 35, the Commission approved an expedited licensing process for two types of hydropower projects – qualifying facilities at existing, nonpowered dams and closed-loop pumped storage projects. The modified regulations will be codified as Part 7 of the Commission’s regulations. The addition of a new Part 7 to the Commission’s regulations will affect only the number of entities that file applications with the Commission for these two project types, and will impose a new, albeit slight, information collection requirement (i.e., filing the request to use the expedited licensing process). The requirement that an applicant file a request for authorization to use the expedited process concurrently with its license application is necessary for the Commission to carry out its responsibilities under the FPA, as amended by the AWIA. The information provided will enable the Commission to review the features of the proposed project and make a determination on whether the proposed project meets the statutory criteria enumerated in the AWIA, as well as the early consultation requirements that the Commission has determined will help it seek to ensure that the proposed project’s license application will be acted on no later than two years after the date of application filing. Submission of the data is necessary to fulfill the requirements of the FPA in order for the Commission to make the required finding that a proposal is economically, technically, and environmentally sound, and is best adapted to a comprehensive plan for improving and developing a waterway or waterways. The Commission is codifying the new requirements in the RM19-6-000 Final Rule in FERC-500 related to the expedited process contained in new sections 7.1-7.9 of the Commission’s regulations.

The latest form for FERC-500, Application for License/Relicense for Water Projects with More than 10 Megawatt (MW) Capacity expires 2022-02-28 and can be found here.

FERC-500, Application (or Modification) for License/Relicense for Water Projects with Greater than 5 MW Capacity

Federal Enterprise Architecture: Energy - Energy Production