FERC last week released its annual Enforcement Report, noting that it had opened 19 new investigations and closed 22 others with settlements or no action in fiscal year 2015. Settlements resulted in more than $26 million in civil penalties and disgorgement of $1 million in unjust profits. The biggest settlements were over the 2011 Southwest power outage that left more than 5 million people without power for up to 12 hours.

Enforcement staff is currently seeking recovery of more than a $500 million in civil penalties and disgorgement through federal court and administrative litigation.

The commission spent about $316 million during the fiscal year, an increase of almost $9 million over FY 2014. Three-quarters of spending was on salaries and benefits for 1,456 full-time equivalents, according to its annual financial report to Congress, which also was issued last week.

NERC Emergency Operations, Interconnection Standards Win Approval

FERC approved two reliability rules proposed by the North American Electric Reliability Corp.:

• One order approves reliability standards EOP-011-1 (Emergency Operations) and PRC-010-1 (Undervoltage Load Shedding) (RM15-7, RM15-12, RM15-13). It also includes a revised definition of the term “remedial action scheme” and eliminates use of the term special protection system. NERC said the two had previously been used interchangeably, resulting in ambiguity.
• The second approves Transmission Operations (TOP) and Interconnection Reliability Operations and Coordination (IRO) reliability standards (RM15-16). The commission said the revised standards are more precise and clarify the delineation of responsibilities between applicable entities while eliminating gaps and ambiguities. Eight current TOP standards were compressed into three. FERC ordered NERC to revise the standards within 18 months to include transmission operator monitoring of non-Bulk Electric System facilities; specify that data exchange capabilities include redundancy and diverse routing; and require testing of alternate or less frequently used data exchange capabilities.

Rehearing Denied on e-Tag Access

FERC denied rehearing in its 2012 order (Order 771) granting the commission, RTOs, ISOs and their market monitoring units’ access to electronic tags (e-Tags) used to schedule transmission (RM11-12-001). The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, the Edison Electric Institute and Southern Co. filed rehearing requests, while Open Access Technology International filed a request for clarification. Before the 2012 order, RTOs could only access e-Tags for interchange transactions that flowed into, out of or across their footprints.

– Rich Heidorn Jr.