WASHINGTON, D.C. – At its monthly open meeting, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) took action on four items key to reliability. FERC endorsed the work of the Electric Reliability Organization (ERO) Enterprise, highlighting NERC's development and enforcement of critical Reliability Standards and acknowledging the significant achievements—such as the implementation of a risk-based approach to reliability—made by the ERO Enterprise over the past five years.
FERC issued an order accepting NERC's 2019 Five-Year Performance Assessment, demonstrating that NERC is fulfilling the requirements as the ERO in accordance with FERC regulations. The order also identifies areas for improvement, such as periodic audits of the Regional Entities, the use of reliability and security guidelines to address risks, performance metrics and oversight of the E-ISAC, sanctions guidelines, and NERC's organization certification program.
FERC approved Reliability Standards TPL-001-5 – Transmission System Planning Performance Requirements and CIP-012-1 – Cyber Security – Communications between Control Centers. TPL-001-5 contains new and revised requirements intended to enhance the quality and rigor of Planning Assessments, thereby contributing to a more reliable bulk power system. Specifically, the standard will require more comprehensive study of potential impacts of protection system single points of failure and enhance requirements for the study of known outages and the possibility of unavailability of long lead-time equipment, consistent with the entity's spare equipment strategy. CIP-012-1 requires responsible entities to protect the confidentiality and integrity of real-time assessment and real-time monitoring data transmitted between control centers, thereby supporting situational awareness and reliable operations. In its order approving CIP-012-1, FERC directs NERC to develop further modifications to require protections regarding the availability of communication links and data communicated between those control centers.
FERC also issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR) that would approve NERC's proposed retirement of requirements in the INT, FAC, PRC, and MOD Reliability Standards families as identified in NERC's Standards Efficiency Review on the grounds that such standards requirements provide little benefit to reliability, are administrative in nature, or are redundant. The NOPR proposes to approve the retirement of 74 requirements and remand the retirement of one requirement. The NOPR seeks additional information on the retirement of two requirements.
The ERO Enterprise appreciates today's action and will continue to work with FERC and stakeholders toward assuring the reliability of the North American bulk power system.
FERC Press Release
