NERC’s Reliability and Security Technical Committee decided Wednesday to suspend planning for the impact of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that could result from a nuclear attack.

The RSTC voted to disband its EMP Working Group after four years, finding that other risks to grid reliability have taken precedence, diverting resources and expertise from the working group and causing participation to drop. (See p. 55 of meeting materials.)

The electromagnetic pulse caused by the detonation of a nuclear weapon can disrupt or damage electronic circuitry. The task force was formed following the Electric Power Research Institute’s 2019 report on EMPs, which concluded that a high-altitude nuclear explosion could cause a multistate electric outage but not the nationwide, monthslong blackout some observers have warned of.

President Trump in March 2019 ordered a governmentwide effort to protect against this threat. NERC responded by establishing the EMP Task Force, and later the EMP Working Group.

At Wednesday’s RSTC meeting, the working group’s former chair, Aaron Shaw of American Electric Power, said initial response was strong — as many as 70 to 80 people were participating in the group regularly. (See Standing-room Only for NERC EMP Meeting.)

But other issues bearing on grid reliability began to take priority, he said, including inverter-based resources, cyber and physical attacks, distributed energy resources and extreme weather.

“What we started noticing in 2022 is that EMP fell off the Risk Report as an emerging risk that needed to be addressed,” Shaw said. Utilities diverted subject-matter experts to other emerging issues, which led federal agencies to disengage as well.

“Very quickly we had all these monthly calls with all these sub-teams and nobody was participating,” he added.

Some attendees at Wednesday’s meeting questioned the move to stop assessing the EMP threat, given current international tensions.

There is a lot of work yet to be done, Shaw agreed, but the momentum to do it has been lost. Individual utilities and agencies can continue on their own.

The vote to disband was 93% to 4%.

The working group can be reconvened relatively quickly if needed. Its work to date will be archived for industry reference, but because it is not complete, it will not be approved or endorsed by the RSTC.

White Paper Green Lighted

The committee also approved the Inverter-Based Resource Performance Subcommittee’s white paper on functional specifications for grid-forming battery energy storage systems connected to the bulk power system. (See p. 95.)

The paper is intended to help transmission planners determine whether interconnected BESS can be considered a grid-forming resource based on its performance.

At the RSTC’s June meeting, the paper bogged down in a debate over whether its wording connoted a suggestion or a directive. It was tabled then, and numerous technical revisions subsequently were made.

Even so, commenters Wednesday suggested fine-tuning the wording to make it clear that this is a white paper, not a directive.

The RSTC voted to approve the paper as it was revised, 90% to 7%.

White Paper Red Flagged

Semantics were an issue again Wednesday on another white paper on using cloud-based computing technology in grid operations. (See p. 236.)

Several speakers — some of them with self-deprecating remarks about their age or understanding of cloud technology — said they are not comfortable with the idea of combining critical operations into a single off-site location.

Not surprisingly, they also did not want it to appear that the RSTC was endorsing a move to cloud-based operations by offering guidance for doing so.

Discussion was paused for lunch, during which staff made revisions. When the meeting reconvened, objections were raised about the placement of a period in a sentence and a plural-vs.-singular construction.

The white paper was rejected in a tie vote.

Further revisions will be made to address the concerns and the matter will be put to a vote again via email.