The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week approved a revised transmission planning reliability standard it had previously rejected as “vague and unenforceable.”

The North American Electric Reliability Corp.’s proposed reliability standard TPL-001-2 would have allowed transmission planners to plan for non-consequential load loss following a single contingency as long as the plan was the result of an open and transparent stakeholder process.

The commission said the revised standard TPL-001-4 will improve reliability “by providing a blend of specific quantitative and qualitative parameters for the permissible use of planned non-consequential load loss to address bulk electric system performance issues.” The commission said the new rule defines the stakeholder process and criteria that must be followed and includes safeguards, including a review process to ensure the procedure does not hurt reliability.

The commission’s approval, a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, will be open for 30 days after its publication in the Federal Register. In a concurring statement, Commissioner John R. Norris praised the rule for balancing the need to protect system reliability and minimize costs.

“NERC’s proposal goes a long way towards empowering local communities to consider the economic tradeoffs between incurring costs to avoid shedding firm load versus planning to shed firm load, while still ensuring that the decision-making process is more open and transparent and building in a safeguard for NERC to review decisions for possible adverse reliability impacts,” Norris said.