On 10/27/00, FERC issued two orders that clarify procedures for requesting 
long term transmission.  (Morgan Stanley v. Ill. Powerand Tenaska Power v. 
SPP).  In both cases, the customer requested long term (year or greater) 
transmission service and in both cases, the ATC was insufficient to award the 
entire request.  Transmission Providers, Ill. Power and SPP treated partial 
service differently.  In these orders FERC holds:

A transmission provider (TP) is NOT required to offer short term service in 
response to a long term request.  Section 19.7 of the pro forma OATT only 
obligates the TP to tell the customer how much partial Long Term service 
could be provided.  Examples:
 -- Customer requests 300 MW long term transmission service for one year.  TP 
replies that it can offer 200 MW for the entire year.
 -- Customer requests 2 year service for 300 MW.  TP replies that it can 
offer 300 MW for one year.
 -- Customer requests 300 MW for one year.  TP can only provide 300 MW for 
summer months.  TP is NOT obligated to provide customer the 3 months  
service.  Furthermore, an annual request for 300 for some months and 0 MW for 
others is NOT a valid long term request.  What Customer is then doing is  
really submitting a short term request for 300 for summer only -- a new short 
term request must be submitted to obtain the summer transmission.

While the TP is not required to respond with short term availability in 
response to a long term request, FERC did footnote to Ill. Power that it 
thinks it is a helpful idea for the TP to alert the customer to what ATC is 
available so the customer can submit a short term request if it wishes.