By Tom Kleckner
The SPP Regional Entity (RE) will cease all compliance monitoring and enforcement activities at the close of business Friday, ending 11 years in an official reliability oversight role that drew concern from FERC and NERC.
RE President Ron Ciesiel said the entity will shut down its database at 5 p.m. CT. He said data and files have been transferred to the registered entities’ new REs and will be available to those entities at their new locations Monday morning.
“Overall, I couldn’t be happier with the transition,” Ciesiel said during the RE Board of Trustees’ final conference call Thursday. “I hope people on the other end are as pleased as I am with how this has moved on.”
SPP announced last July that it was dissolving the RE, citing a mismatch between its and SPP’s footprints. However, NERC and FERC have also expressed reservations about the RTO’s involvement in RE activities. (See SPP to Dissolve Regional Entity.)
The RE was responsible for auditing and enforcing reliability rules in three balancing authorities (SPP, Southwestern Power Administration and parts of MISO). Most of its 122 registered entities have been reassigned to the Midwest Reliability Organization, with the remainder joining the SERC Reliability Corp.
NERC’s board of trustees and FERC both approved the SPP RE’s dissolution earlier this year. (See FERC Approves Dissolution of SPP RE.) FERC issued an order that terminates an amended and revised delegation agreement between NERC and SPP, effective Aug. 31, and revises the delegated agreements among NERC, MRO and SERC to reflect their new geographic footprints.
NERC will assume the compliance monitoring and enforcement of the RTO for two years following the delegated agreement’s termination date, after which it will determine a successor.
Ciesiel and a transition staff of three other employees will remain at SPP’s headquarters in Little Rock, Ark., until Aug. 31 to close out any remaining issues.
