Cage Ranch Solar, LLC v. FERC

── Cage Ranch Solar, LLC v. FERC ── Court: Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Date: May 19, 2026 Category: General United States Court of Appeals FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT No. 23-1227 September Term, 2025 FILED ON: MAY 19, 2026 CAGE RANCH SOLAR, LLC AND CAGE RANCH SOLAR II, LLC, PETITIONERS v. FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION, RESPONDENT SOUTHWEST POWER POOL, INC., INTERVENOR Consolidated with 23-1304 On Petitions for Review of Orders of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Before: KATSAS and PAN, Circuit Judges, and GINSBURG, Senior Circuit Judge. JUDGMENT These petitions for review were considered on the record from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and on the briefs and oral arguments of the parties. The Court has accorded the issues full consideration and has determined that they do not warrant a published opinion. See D.C. Cir. R. 36(d). It is now ORDERED AND ADJUDGED that the petitions for review be DISMISSED. * * * Cage Ranch Solar, LLC and Cage Ranch Solar II, LLC (collectively, “Cage Ranch”) petition for review of orders of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission denying Cage Ranch’s complaint and request for a waiver. Before the FERC, Cage Ranch argued that Intervenor Southwest Power Pool, Inc. used a fundamentally flawed study model to assign network upgrade costs to Cage Ranch. Cage Ranch also argued the FERC should waive the deadline by which Southwest required Cage Ranch to post financial security to maintain its position in Southwest’s interconnection queue. Before us, Cage Ranch argues the FERC failed to ensure the costs assigned to it were just and reasonable and was otherwise arbitrary and capricious. We conclude that Cage Ranch has failed to show it suffered an injury necessary to establish its standing, and we accordingly dismiss the petitions. I Cage Ranch is the developer of a 900 MW solar generation project in Texas. In 2017, in order to connect its project to the electrical grid, Cage Ranch submitted interconnection requests to Southwest, a regional transmission organization. Southwest’s interconnection study process is cluster-based and involves three phases. Following Phase 1 and Phase 2 is a “decision point,” during which an interconnection customer must decide whether to post the required financial security. Failure to do so within 15 business days results in withdrawal of the customer’s interconnection request and loss of its position in the interconnection queue. At Decision Point 2, the amount of financial security an interconnection customer must post is 20% of the network upgrade costs assigned to that customer by the interconnection study, less the amount of any security that customer has already provided. Southwest assigned Cage Ranch’s interconnection requests to Group 5 of the 2017-002 study cluster. Southwest posted Phase 1 results for this group in February 2022, preliminarily assigning $302 million in network upgrade costs to Cage Ranch. As required by Southwest’s Tariff, Cage Ranch paid $4.19 million in financial security and proceeded to Phase 2. In August 2022, Southwest posted Phase 2 results, which allocated $311 million in network upgrade costs to Cage Ranch. Cage Ranch would have had to post approximately $60 million by September 20, 2022 to proceed to Phase 3. Rather than post the $60 million, on September 20, 2022 Cage Ranch filed a complaint with the FERC challenging Southwest’s Phase 2 cost-allocation model as defective. Because Southwest’s Tariff treats the failure timely to post financial security as a withdrawal, Cage Ranch also sought a waiver of the deadline and withdrawal provisions in the Tariff while the FERC conside