SAVANNAH, Ga. — “It’s so amazing to see people in three dimensions,” joked NERC CEO Jim Robb on Wednesday, as SERC Reliability held its first in-person Members and Board of Directors meetings since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In his opening remarks at the Members Meeting, Robb reminisced that one of his first assignments, when “I had been the CEO of NERC for about two days,” was to deliver a briefing to SERC’s board. He said that despite the arrival of pandemic restrictions, the last two years have seen “so much positive change at NERC and the way NERC and the regional entities work together,” with SERC playing a significant role.

“I think because of the proximity of Atlanta to [SERC headquarters in] Charlotte, we had a little bit of a special relationship,” Robb said.

“I really want to take my hat off also to the SERC staff, because [I’ve seen] them showing up over the last two to three years in very different ways than we would have seen them before. … The team here [is] leaning in and [has] really become very positive contributors to the ERO Enterprise overall.”

SERC CEO Jason Blake returned Robb’s compliments, speaking of NERC’s willingness to include regional entity CEOs in the development of the ERO Enterprise Strategic Plan. Blake likened SERC to “a player on this team” that needs to bring “everything [it] can … to really advance” the good of the entire organization.

Wednesday also marked the one-year anniversary of the first board meeting under SERC’s new governance structure, which was adopted in January 2021. The new structure instituted SERC’s members group, which meets once a year alongside the Board of Directors, and also reorganized the board structure to include three independent directors.

Lonni Dieck, a member of that first class of independent directors who attended their first meeting a year ago, thanked SERC’s board and staff for helping them “up the learning curve,” while also “being very receptive to our suggestions and feedback.”

New Sector Directors Welcomed

Dieck, SERC’s lead independent director, was one of three board officers — along with Chair Todd Hillman and Vice Chair Pandelis Xanthakos — whose terms the board agreed to extend for an additional year. Instead of leaving their posts on May 21, 2022, they will leave a year later. The extension was suggested because the same bylaw changes creating the membership structure and independent directors also specified that officers serve terms of two years. Because the three took office Jan. 1, 2021, leaving this May would have cut short their terms at one year, five months.

The board also approved revising current directors’ terms to end on May 31 rather than June 31 as before, once more due to the new bylaws. The only exceptions were the independent directors, who took office Jan. 31, 2021, and thus would have ended their terms on Dec. 31, 2022. Their terms were modified to end May 31, 2023, for Shirley Bloomfield and Deborah Wheeler, and May 31, 2024 for Dieck (who will stay on as a director for another year after her term as an officer expires).

In addition, the board welcomed three new sector directors at Wednesday’s meeting: Virgil Hobbs of Southeastern Power Administration, representing the Federal-State sector; Adrianne Collins of Southern Company Services, representing investor-owned utilities; and Eric Laverty of ACES Power, from the marketer sector. They respectively replaced outgoing directors Bob Dalrymple of Tennessee Valley Authority, Nelson Peeler of Duke Energy Carolinas, and Brad Cox of Tenaska Power Services.

2023 Business Plan and Budget

SERC’s board approved the RE’s 2023 business plan and budget for posting and submission to NERC.

Next year’s budget is proposed to rise to $27.8 million, up 4.1% over last year’s budget of $26.7 million; the RE’s assessment is also planned to rise 4.8%, to $26 million. SERC plans to release about $1.6 million from its assessment stabilization reserve to cover the balance.

The board’s approval of the draft budget was conditioned on SERC’s Finance and Audit Committee investigating the current employment market to determine whether the market adjustment category — which governs spending on merit-based raises and promotions — should be expanded beyond its current planned increase of 3%. According to the resolution, expansion to this category “shall not exceed an additional 1.5% increase.”

Cybersecurity and Ukraine

Stephen Brown, SERC’s director of cyber and physical security, reminded members to be on their guard against potential cyberattacks by Russia’s intelligence services. Security experts and the government have issued repeated warnings about the potential for Russia to turn its cyber capabilities against global targets as its military operations in Ukraine drag on. (See White House Issues Fresh Russian Cyber Warning.)

Brown said that Russia’s military and intelligence services have multiple cyberattack teams, which have been known to compete with each other by launching multiple attacks on the same target. One of these groups was charged in 2020 for a series of attacks around the world, including assaults on Ukraine’s power grid in 2015 and 2017. (See Six Russians Charged for Ukraine Cyberattacks.)

“This is a critical moment in our history, as we have the opportunity to assist our industry and country,” Brown said. “We want to ask all of our entities and committees to adopt the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s [CISA] Shields Up recommendations and have a heightened posture when it comes to cybersecurity and protecting their most critical assets. Just as important, if you’re not already a member of the [E-ISAC], we encourage you to join. … They have relationships with [CISA] and the [FBI] that give them the ability to see from a global risk perspective and see potential threats that impact cybersecurity not only from a global standpoint, but specifically for our industry.”