FERC accepts North American Electric Reliability Corporation Performance Assessment

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Jan. 23 endorsed the continued work of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and approved two reliability standards.

In the NERC 2019 Five-Year Performance Assessment (RR19-7-000), FERC recognized that the corporation “continues to demonstrate its ability to develop and enforce Reliability Standards and continues to satisfy the criteria for certification as the ERO that is responsible for developing and enforcing the Commission’s mandatory reliability standards.” The order also found that NERC’s Regional Entities continue to meet requirements for delegated authority to enforce the standards.

“NERC and the Regional Entities have made significant achievements over the last five years, including a risk-based approach to focus resources on matters of most significance to reliability,” FERC Chairman Neil Chatterjee said.

FERC also identified areas for improvement, including periodic audits of the Regional Entities, its use of reliability and security guidelines to address risks, performance metrics, and oversight of the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center, sanctions guidelines, and its organization certification program.

FERC directed NERC to amend its Sanction Guidelines to increase transparency into how it applies penalties, adjustment factors, and non-monetary sanctions. The filing must also submit for Commission review any tools or formulas used to implement the guidelines.

FERC also approved reliability standards for Transmission System Planning Performance Requirements and Cyber Security — Communications between Control Centers. The Commission also issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would approve NERC’s proposed retirement of 74 of the 77 Reliability Standards developed under NERC’s Standards Efficiency Review Project, which identifies standards that provide little benefit, are administrative in nature or are redundant.