A recently introduced policy allowing more flexibility in the ERO’s compliance monitoring and enforcement process should provide registered entities needed flexibility in some circumstances, NERC Director of Compliance Assurance and Certification Lonnie Ratliff said at ReliabilityFirst’s monthly Technical Talk with RF webinar May 27.

However, he warned, utilities should expect the new abeyance measure to be applied sparingly and not see it as “a free pass” on compliance.

NERC first proposed allowing abeyance periods for select standards in a supplement to its five-year performance assessment submitted to FERC in 2024. Described as a way to “streamline the standards development process” by addressing “stakeholders’ considerations of compliance risk,” the policy would allow the ERO to set a length of time following the adoption of a new reliability standard in which some types of noncompliance may be processed in ways other than compliance violations, including “standards development feedback or implementation [of] lessons learned.”

Ratliff urged attendees of the RF webinar to keep in mind the limits of the new policy. He emphasized that for standard drafting teams, “abeyance and abeyance language isn’t a reason to write a subpar standard.” NERC’s proposal states that SDTs do not have input into whether a standard includes an abeyance period; instead, NERC staff and the regional entities will decide on a case-by-case basis whether the standard is a candidate for such action and how much time is appropriate. This language will be inserted in the “Compliance” section of each standard.

For utilities, abeyance is “not a free pass [or] an extension of the implementation plan,” Ratliff said. Abeyance also will not apply to all standards projects, only to those dealing with high-priority projects creating a new standard or extensively modifying an existing standard, and where the project involves:

• • new technology required to implement the standard;
  • emerging reliability issues for which best practices have not yet been identified; or
  • high levels of technical complexity.

“If a standard is effective and enforceable, we will continue to monitor as every other standard,” Ratliff said.

The ERO put the abeyance proposal into practice with EOP-012-3 (Extreme cold weather preparedness and operations), submitted for FERC approval in April with a planned effective date of Oct. 1. (See NERC Board Approves Cold Weather Standard.) In its petition for approval of the standard, NERC proposed a two-year abeyance period beginning on the standard’s effective date.

During this period, the ERO will not pursue enforcement actions against entities for failure to comply with requirement R1, section 1.1 of the standard, which mandates that generator owners calculate the extreme cold weather temperature for each of their applicable generating units.

NERC explained that some stakeholders had expressed “concerns about how to perform this calculation when their available datasets may have missing or invalid hourly values,” and it wanted GOs to rest assured they would not be penalized for an incorrect calculation when they were “acting in good faith to comply with the standard.”

“This compliance abeyance period [will] encourage entities to share observations and experiences through implementation of new standards without fear of potential noncompliance … to mitigate reliability risks,” NERC said. “This feedback loop [will] collectively be used to inform the standards development process … to revise the standards prior to full enforcement.”

Ratliff encouraged attendees to take the EOP-012-3 abeyance period, and those in any future standard, not as a signal of easy enforcement, but as an indication the issues identified need significant attention. He advised entities to work with their peers and the REs to share their concerns and ideas about how to approach compliance so they will be prepared when enforcement starts.

Addressing a question about abeyance periods that he said he gets often, Ratliff said the new policy applies only to new standards going forward. NERC will not examine existing standards with confusion about their requirements to see if abeyance periods should be added.