By Rich Heidorn Jr.

FERC last week issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to incorporate in its regulations the North American Energy Standards Board’s latest Standards for Business Practices and Communication Protocols for Public Utilities (Version 003.1) (RM05-5-025).

NAESB’s new standards were adopted by its Wholesale Electric Quadrant (WEQ) and filed with the commission last October.

The commission also said it would list NAESB’s updated Smart Grid Business Practice Standards (WEQ-019) in its General Policy and Interpretations for guidance.

Version 003.1 updates earlier versions of nine standards covering such things as definitions of terms and Open Access Same-Time Information System (OASIS) standards.

It also adds a new standard establishing the Electric Industry Registry to replace the NERC Transmission System Information Networks as the tool to be used by wholesale electric markets to conduct electronic transactions via e-Tags.

The commission declined to adopt a second set of new standards, Modeling Business Practice Standards (WEQ-23), which specifies requirements for calculating available transfer capability (ATC) and available flowgate capability (AFC).

The standards were designed to complement NERC’s proposed retirement of its “MOD A” reliability standards. NERC has proposed replacing its six MOD A standards with standard MOD-001-2, focused exclusively on the reliability aspects of ATC and AFC.

The commission declined to incorporate the standard because it is still considering NERC’s proposed retirement of its ATC-related reliability standards (RM14-7) and is considering changes to the calculation of ATC (AD15-5). The commission said it will consider the NAESB standards as part of the ATC dockets.

The commission also said it would not incorporate:

• Standards of Conduct for Electric Transmission Providers (WEQ-009), because it is only a placeholder for future standards; and
• Contracts Related Standards (WEQ-010), because it contains an optional NAESB contract regarding fund transfers that is not required by the commission.