NERC’s Standards Committee approved the addition of a new member to the standards drafting team (SDT) working on its cold weather standard project (Project 2019-06) to replace a member who is retiring, even though the project is expected to wrap up within the next two months.

The proposed standards are out for their second formal comment and ballot period, which is expected to conclude April 26. The Standards Committee agreed last month, in a special vote without a meeting, to shorten the comment period from 45 to 25 days after the Board of Trustees requested the work be accelerated considering February’s winter storms that led to prolonged outages in Texas and the Midwest. (See NERC Provides Cold Weather, Cyber Updates.) NERC hopes to bring the finished standards to the board for approval when it meets on June 11.

Members Question Nomination Process

At Wednesday’s Standards Committee meeting, Neil Shockey of Southern California Edison expressed surprise at being asked to approve a new SDT member given the advanced stage of the project, as well as concern that introducing a fresh face could be disruptive to a group that has been working together for nearly two years. Northern California Power Agency’s Marty Hostler also questioned the way the substitution was proposed: NERC brought a single candidate to the committee for approval without the customary public nomination period.

NERC Manager of Standards Development Latrice Harkness explained that staff felt the proposed replacement — who was not identified by name during the meeting — was the best fit for several reasons. First, the candidate’s “geographical and functional entity perspective” was a close match for the retiring SDT member; additionally, the nominee “has been following this project closely” and could therefore provide a “seamless transition.”

Howard Gugel, NERC’s vice president of engineering and standards, said he was surprised that members considered the proposal unusual.

“This is not precedent-setting. We have done this for other drafting teams in the past,” Gugel said. “Maybe not ones that have had this short time frame, but I can tell you there’ve been times … where we’ve had members retire or move on or resign from a drafting team, and so we’ve looked at people that were actively involved as observers and made recommendations to the Standards Committee to appoint those, as opposed to going out and soliciting nominations.”

Linn Oelker of LG&E and KU argued that NERC presenting a candidate to the committee without seeking industry input presented a challenge in terms of “optics” and suggested “just [letting] the person that retired retire, and [letting] the drafting team move on.” However, others pointed out that the standards’ approval in the current ballot period is not a foregone conclusion, and worried about the burden on a reduced SDT if further work is needed.

“We’re assuming that this project’s going to end by June; sure, that’s the baseline, but there’s always the possibility that it does not, or extends further,” said Charles Yeung of SPP. “So if that does happen, it’s better to appoint [a replacement] now than [to] have to appoint one later.”

The motion passed with 11 in favor; Shockey and Oelker voted against it, along with Kent Feliks of American Electric Power, NextEra Energy’s Justin Welty and Southern Co.’s Jim Howell. Occidental Chemical’s Venona Greaff abstained.

Approval for CIP-012-2 Ballot, Efficiency Review

Wednesday’s meeting also saw the committee unanimously approve the initial posting of proposed reliability standard CIP-012-2 and its implementation plan for a 45-day formal comment period. The standard is the product of Project 2020-04, the standard authorization request for which was approved in December. (See “Smoother Road for Project 2020-04,” NERC Standards Committee Briefs: Dec. 9, 2020.)

In addition, members voted without dissent to endorse the Process Subcommittee’s recommendation of a comprehensive review of NERC’s standards development processes, with the goal of recommending revisions that will “engrain efficiency principles” into them. The assessment will be performed with NERC staff; results will be reviewed with the Standards Committee and possibly with the Compliance and Certification Committee if warranted.