North American Reliability Corporation board approves ERO Enterprise Long-Term Strategy at last meeting of 2017

The Board of Trustees of the North American Reliability Corporation (NERC) approved the Electric Reliability Organization (ERO) Enterprise Long-Term Strategy and took several other actions at their last meeting of 2017 held last week in New Orleans.

The ERO Enterprise Long-Term Strategy looks ahead five to seven years to evaluate how changes in the industry will impact the ERO Enterprise, highlighting emerging and potential reliability impacts.

At the meeting, the board approved the 2018–2020 Reliability Standards Development Plan at the meeting, which focuses on periodic reviews, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission directives, emerging risks, Standard Authorization Requests and the standards grading initiative.

The NERC board also approved the creation of the Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement Program (CMEP) Technology project, a suite of tools to integrate and share data to enhance documentation, share and analyze compliance work activities and improve CMEP activities across the ERO Enterprise.

Additionally, the board adopted Reliability Standard TPL-007-2 – Geomagnetic Disturbance (GMD) Mitigation, which establishes requirements for conducting GMD vulnerability assessments using a modified GMD event. The standard also updates established requirements pertaining to transformer thermal impact assessments and requires the collection of GMD-related data.

In other actions, the board accepted NERC’s Special Assessment: Potential Bulk Power System Impacts Due to Severe Disruptions on the Natural Gas System, which analyzed potential reliability impacts of natural gas disruptions and found that impacts vary depending on location and infrastructure density and that mitigation strategies can reduce potential impacts.

The Board also requested that the Reliability Issues Steering Committee (RISC) review how NERC’s mission currently incorporates resilience of the bulk power system, consider working definitions of resilience and create a framework for further discussion at the next Board of Trustees meeting on Feb. 8 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.