NERC’s Board of Trustees and Member Representatives Committee approved a slew of actions at a packed virtual meeting on Thursday.

Approvals and Standards Actions

Project 2015-09 (Establish and communicate system operating limits), NERC’s longest-running standards project, was unanimously approved by the board, advancing eight reliability standards to FERC for final approval:

• FAC-011-4 — System operating limits methodology for the operations horizon;
• FAC-014-3 — Establish and communicate system operating limit;
• IRO-008-3 — Reliability coordinator operational analyses and real-time assessments;
• TOP-001-6 — Transmission operations;
• FAC-003-5 — Transmission vegetation management;
• PRC-002-3 — Disturbance monitoring and reporting requirements;
• PRC-023-5 — Transmission relay loadability;
• PRC-026-2 — Relay performance during stable power swings.

The board also approved WECC’s revised reliability standards development procedures (RSDP), adopted by the regional entity’s board of directors in December. The revised RSDP is intended “to clarify terminology and to clarify and streamline certain process steps in the development of standards.” A set of revised bylaws from SERC Reliability — primarily “clean-up changes” after the comprehensive bylaw changes approved by FERC last year — gained approval as well. (See FERC Approves SERC’s Bylaw Changes.)

NERC’s Corporate Governance and Human Resources Committee submitted new governance guidelines to the board  to align their language with NERC’s revised bylaws approved by FERC in April. (See “NERC Bylaw Revisions Move to FERC,” NERC Board of Trustees/MRC Briefs: Aug. 20, 2020.) The board approved the new guidelines, along with a proposal by the Finance and Audit Committee to renew NERC’s line of credit.

The board also accepted a proposal establishing Aug. 6, 2021 as the deadline for NERC’s current members to submit their registration materials to renew their membership, and revisions to NERC’s Rules of Procedure that would:

• require NERC to share with FERC any all-points bulletins issued by the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center; and
• allow regional entities more discretion in allocating their compliance monitoring and enforcement resources and lift some administrative burdens on noncompliance resolution.

Reliability Assessment Preview

Previewing the 2021 Summer Reliability Assessment, John Moura, NERC’s director of reliability assessment and performance analysis, warned attendees that the months ahead are likely to be as challenging as 2020.

“The last two peaking seasons have been difficult to say the least, and the preliminary reliability assessment results … show similar risks” for this summer, Moura said.

Mark Olson, NERC’s manager of reliability assessments, explained that with above-normal temperatures expected across much of North America this summer, electricity demand is likely to be high as well, leading to elevated risk of energy shortfalls across the Western Interconnection, where resource levels are similar to 2020, as well as in Texas, MISO and New England. This is despite the fact that anticipated reserve margins meet reference levels in all areas.

“New resources have been added in California, and some plans for generation retirements have been put on hold to improve the California-Mexico resource adequacy outlook compared to 2020,” Olson said. “However, other Western assessment areas’ peak demand projections have increased, and overall Western Interconnection resource capacity is lower compared to 2020.”

California-Mexico is at the highest risk, due to the large number of solar resources in the region, which reduce output in late afternoon, potentially requiring energy imports to offset lost generation. Wildfire risk is also projected to be above normal in the U.S. Southwest and parts of Canada in early summer.

The draft reliability assessment will be sent to the Reliability and Security Technical Committee next week for endorsement, and the final report will be submitted to the board and MRC May 24. The full report is planned for release May 27.

Future Meetings

Acknowledging the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Board Chair Kenneth DeFontes told attendees at the Member Representatives Committee open meeting that NERC leadership has decided the board’s next meeting — currently scheduled to be held Aug. 11-12 in Vancouver, Canada — will have to be conducted virtually instead. A decision has not been made on the Nov. 3-4 board meeting, planned for Atlanta.

However, NERC is considering a hybrid format for the August meeting in which board members would meet in person in Atlanta and other attendees would attend remotely. The plan is similar to one proposed by CEO Jim Robb earlier this year. (See NERC Considering Long-term Virtual Board Meeting Format.)

So far NERC has not provided any updates about when its offices in Atlanta and D.C. will reopen. A representative told ERO Insider on Wednesday that leadership continues “to monitor the situation.” (See NERC: Latest COVID Relief Extension Likely The Last.)

Andy Dodge, director of FERC’s Office of Electric Reliability, indicated to the MRC that the commission is eyeing a return to the office as early as Oct. 1. But though Dodge said FERC and NERC are “pretty much synced up” on their overall pandemic strategies, he stressed that “there hasn’t been any coordination at all” on the reopening plan.