The commission issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for four new reliability standards addressing vegetation management and facility connection requirements for generator interconnection facilities (also known as generator tie lines).
Reason for Changes:
FERC had encouraged NERC to identify reliability standards specific to generator owners and operators with interconnection facilities including transmission lines. Eliminating the need for generators to register under the transmission function will allow them to focus on reliability standards specific to them, NERC said.
Impact:
- FAC-001-1 requires a Generator Owner to publish facility connection requirements when it executes an agreement to evaluate the reliability impact of interconnecting a third party facility to its tie line.
- FAC-003-3 requires a Generator Owner to perform vegetation management on its tie line.
Standards PRC-004-2.1a (Analysis and Mitigation of Transmission and Generation Protection System Misoperations) and PRC-005-1.1b (Transmission and Generation Protection System Maintenance and Testing) establish generation owners’ responsibility for the FAC requirements as they apply to tie lines.
In most cases, NERC said, these are the only reliability standards that apply to generator interconnection facilities. The changes do not affect the requirement that generators comply with other reliability standards unrelated to tie lines, such as those covering system restoration plans and notification of equipment failures.
Generators currently registered under transmission functions will have to apply to change their certifications under the NERC Rules of Procedure.
