FERC last week approved a $4.4 million settlement with PacifiCorp that ends an enforcement probe into the utility’s transmission line rating practices.
The deal includes a $1.9 million payment to the U.S. Treasury and $2.5 million that PacifiCorp will use to improve its transmission line rating capabilities, subject to FERC enforcement staff approval. The utility neither admitted nor denied the allegations in the case (IN21-6).
The allegations in the settlement cover 2009 until 2017, during which time enforcement staff found clearance violations on at least 215 transmission lines, which is 58% of PacifiCorp’s total transmission lines.
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The National Electrical Safety Code sets minimum clearances from any obstacle to conductors that must be maintained under the “maximum conductor temperature for which the line is designed to operate.”
PacifiCorp allegedly violated a NERC mandatory standard, FAC-009-1 RI, which requires utilities to document their “Facilities Ratings Methodology” in writing. The FRM contains the guidelines for transmission owners to develop their facility ratings and they are supposed to be followed.
Facility Ratings dictate how much power can flow across a facility, such as a transmission line. PacifiCorp developed its FRM in 2009 and it has been updated four times since then.
NERC issued a recommendation to the industry in October 2010 that it and regional entities had become aware of discrepancies between the design and actual field conditions of transmission lines that might be widespread. The reliability organization recommended that transmission owners, such as PacifiCorp, review their FRMs to ensure the written methodology is based on actual field conditions.
PacifiCorp spent $132 million fixing 4,725 clearance conditions, with the work wrapping up in 2017. Enforcement found that the clearance issues clashed with NERC’s requirements and did not fix all the violations until that work was completed.
The $2.5 million will go to reliability enhancements above and beyond NERC’s requirements for transmission line ratings. It will pay for a new single-source transmission facility ratings database management system that will promote enhanced accuracy in the development, updating and communication of facility ratings.
PacifiCorp will also install 60 new weather monitoring stations throughout its transmission system, which will feed information about ambient conditions directly into the data management system to further improve transmission line ratings. PacifiCorp agreed to make those investments within two years of the agreement.
