NERC Standards Committee Briefs: 9-18-19

Casuscelli, Bennett to Lead Committee in 2020

Sep 24, 2019

NERC's Standards Committee elected new leadership and approved its 2020-2022 Standards Development Plan at a meeting last week.

The NERC Standards Committee on Wednesday elected Amy Casuscelli as chair and Todd Bennett as vice chair for a two-year term beginning in January.

Casuscelli is a senior reliability standards analyst for Xcel Energy. Bennett is a manager of reliability compliance for Associated Electric Cooperative Inc. (AECI).

The two-year terms of the committee’s 10 segment representatives — including Bennett, the segment 3 representative — also expire at the end of the year. NERC will consider n o minations until Oct. 10.

The committee agreed to hold four in-person meetings in 2020: March 17-18 and Dec. 8-9 at NERC headquarters in Atlanta, June 16-17 in Denver and Sept. 23-24 in Salt Lake City (a joint meeting with the Compliance and Certification Committee). The schedule could be trimmed to three meetings if a fourth is not needed. The committee holds conference calls each month between in-person meetings.

Reliability Standards Development Plan OKd

The committee endorsed the 2020-2022 Reliability Standards De v elopment Plan (RSDP), which will be presented to the Board of Trustees for approval in November.

NERC’s Rules of Procedure require it to provide the plan — which includes schedules and anticipated resource needs for each project under development or expected to begin — to FERC and Canadian and Mexican government authorities. The three-year plan requires the committee to provide the Board of Trustees yearly progress reports.

As of Aug. 31, according to the report, there were 12 outstanding FERC directives, six of which are being addressed in the standards development process. All projects from the previous RSDP are expected to be completed this year, except for seven that will continue into 2020:

Project 2015-09: Establish and Communicate System Op e rating Li m its
Project 2016-02: Modificat i ons to CIP Stan d ards
Project 2017-01: Modifications to BAL-00 3 -1.1 (phase 2)
Project 2017-07: Standards Alignment with Reg i stration
Project 2017-03: FA C -008-3 Periodic Review
Project 2017-04: Periodic Review of Interchange Scheduling and Coordination Standards
Project 2017-05: NUC-001-3 Periodic R e view

Soo Jin Kim, manager of standards development, told the committee the plan will be updated to reflect projects’ status before being submitted to the board.

Actions on Resource Documents

The committee approved revisions to two SC resource documents and the retirement of a third:

Retired will be SC procedure “Approving Errata in an Approved Reliability Standard,” which describes how NERC staff prepares and files errata versions. The procedures have been added to the NERC Standard Processes Manual.
The “Guidance Document for Management of Remanded Interpretations,” will be revised to clarify that the notice provisions are similar to those in Section 309.2 of the NERC Rules of Procedure. It requires notifications be made to FERC and Canadian and Mexican government authorities when a reliability standard is remanded.
“Acceptance Criteria of a Reliability Standard (Quality Objectives),” was revised to clarify the correlation between the document and the SC’s Ten Benchmarks of an Excellent Reliability Standard and FERC Order 672, which established the criteria used to assess standards submitted for FERC approval.

Volunteers Needed

Soo Jin Kim said more members are needed for the standard drafting team Project 2 0 19-04: Modifications to PRC-005-6, although the nomination period has already closed. Project 2019-02 : BES Cyber System I n formation Access Management, which closed Sept. 20, also had vacancies as of Sept. 18, she said.

— Rich Heidorn Jr.

KeywordsAssociated Electric Cooperative Inc. (AECI)