FERC Plans to Approve 83 Reliability Standards
November 13, 2006 // Published as a news service by IHS
FERC issued the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) on Oct. 20, 2006 and said that some of the standards need clarification, improvement or strengthening.
However, FERC proposed the standards for approval because the FERC is confident they are "just, reasonable" and "not unduly discriminatory or preferential," and that the electric reliability organization (ERO), along with the industry, can develop the required modifications via the stakeholder process.
FERC also noted that it was in the best interest of the public to make the 83 proposed reliability standards - including six of the eight regional variances - binding by June 2007, because it allows the public to benefit from mandatory standards before the next peak demand season.
The FERC provided direction to the ERO on what it and the industry must do to refine some of the 83 standards FERC has proposed to make compulsory.
Required modifications to the standards are detailed in the NOPR and will address blackout recommendations. NERC has already begun to make other improvements - supported by FERC, the ERO and the industry - that are also detailed in the NOPR, such as clarifying the entities subject to the specific standard.
The functional model will be one key piece of information that will help clarify applicability. The FERC proposed to use the NERC functional model to identify the applicable entities to which each reliability standard applies and said that any future changes to the functional model must be approved by the FERC because of the close link with the applicability of a reliability standard.
FERC also said it would amend its regulation to require that each standard identify the subset of users, owners and operators to which that particular standard applies.
FERC said that 24 additional regional standards requested by NERC would remain pending and requested additional information. Instead of remanding these standards, FERC is allowing NERC and industry to build on past efforts and use the current framework for the 24 standards to develop the needed information and to show that the processes satisfy FERC procedural requirements.