The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week approved actions on four standards and policies proposed by the North American Electric Reliability Corp. and the North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB).
Notices of Proposed Rulemaking
Demand and Energy Data Reliability Standard
The NOPR (RM14-12) proposed to accept NERC reliability standard MOD-031-1 (Demand and Energy Data), which governs the collection of demand, energy and related data to support reliability studies. NERC said the proposal clarifies data collection requirements and adds transmission planners as entities that must report demand and energy data. Applicable entities are required to report actual peak hour demand from the previous year for comparison with forecasted values. They also must explain how their peak demand forecasts and demand side management forecasts compare to actual demand and demand side management. (See related story, Brattle: Missing EE Costing PJM Load $433M Annually.)
Communications Reliability Standards
The NOPR (RM14-13) proposed approval of two revised NERC standards, COM-001-2 (Communications) and COM-002-4 (Operating Personnel Communications Protocols). Among the requirements is the use of a three-part communications process when issuing operating instructions: recipients must repeat the instruction and receive confirmation from the issuer that the response was correct, or request that the issuer reissue the instruction. The standard establishes “zero-tolerance” enforcement for failure to use three-part communications during an emergency.
The commission ordered NERC to modify COM-001-2 or develop a separate standard that ensures that entities maintain adequate internal communications capabilities. It noted that a task force report on the 2003 blackout found that one of the causes of the outage was that FirstEnergy’s control center computer support and operations staff lacked effective internal communications procedures and “lacked procedures to ensure that its operators were continually aware of the functional state of their critical monitoring tools.”
Final Rule
Standards for Business Practices and Communication Protocols for Public Utilities
The final rule (RM05-5-022) incorporates the latest version of NAESB’s Standards for Business Practices and Communication Protocols for Public Utilities into FERC regulations. The revised standards reflect the commission’s Order 890 series of rulings and other orders. They include standards supporting Network Integration Transmission Service on an Open Access Same-Time Information System (OASIS); Service Across Multiple Transmission Systems (SAMTS); and commission policy regarding rollover rights for redirects. Modifications were also made to ensure consistency across the OASIS-related standards.
The rule also includes changes reflecting updates to e-Tag specifications and gas-electric coordination standards to provide consistency between the two markets.
Compliance Filing
Find, Fix, Track and Report (FFT) program
The commission approved NERC’s annual compliance filing on its Find, Fix, Track and Report (FFT) program, as well as two changes to the program. The order (RC11-6-004) approved NERC’s proposal to continue processing some moderate risk violations as FFTs. The commission also approved NERC’s proposal to extend the mitigation period after an FFT is posted from 90 days to one year, but it rejected a proposal to allow some mitigation activities to go beyond a year. “We do not believe that NERC has provided adequate support for the need for this proposal,” the commission said. “Further, we are concerned that mitigation periods of greater than one year could weaken the incentive for entities to expeditiously mitigate possible violations and delay necessary corrections.”
