By Kennedy Maize
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission yesterday (Sept. 18) approved a quartet of actions aimed at boosting the security and reliability of the U.S. electric grid as it faces challenges related to increasing load and operational complexity.
FERC Chairman David Rosner said, “The reliability and security of our country’s electric system is essential to our economic prosperity, national security, and everyone’s wellbeing,” He added, “The actions we are taking today are necessary to ensure our grid is resilient for all Americans today and in the future.”
FERC’s actions included:
A final rule directing the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) to consider supply chain risks in its reliability standards, following a September 2024 proposed rulemaking. The rule is designed to assure reliability standards extend to “certain network-connected equipment to further protect the electric grid from outside threats.” The rule is effective 60 days after publication in the Federal Register. NERC must “provide responsive modifications within 18 months of publication.”
A proposed rulemaking focuses on the growing practice of using virtualization to augment traditional practices in setting reliability standards. This reflects the increasing use of advanced software, including cloud-based technologies, in testing the security of the grid. The commission hopes this will protect electrical infrastructure while reducing costs of traditional practices. The order would require NERC to come up with four new and 18 changes to its “Glossary of Terms” and 11 modifications to its “Critical Infrastructure Protection Reliability Standards.”
Another proposed rule for a revised NERC standard to protect the cybersecurity of the “low-impact” bulk electric system, the majority of the assets of the electric system, “against the threat of a coordinated cyber attack by establishing new security requirements for communications and system management.” FERC is also looking for public comment on “the evolution of threats” to the low-impact system and “whether it would be beneficial for NERC to perform a study or develop a whitepaper addressing these evolving threats.”
Approved NERC’s proposed revisions to its standard for cold weather reliability, which FERC ordered in June 2024 to respond to winter storm Uri in Texas in February 2021 and winter storm Elliott in December 2022 across much of the U.S. Both storms revealed serious failures of the bulk electric system. The new standard goes into effect on October 1, well ahead of this winter. The order, FERC said, “improves clarity in communications requirements and helps ensure that needed power is available for the people and businesses which rely on it during extreme cold weather events.”
Before FERC began its monthly meeting (as usual, it skipped August), newly-appointed chairman Rosner unveiled a letter to the nation’s wholesale grid operators, the “regional transmission operators,” and “independent system operators.”
The letter asks the RTOs and ISOs to advise the commission on their “perspective on a critical but often overlooked tool: load forecasting. At a time when utilities forecast hundreds or thousands of megawatts of growth, improving forecasts by even a few percentage points in the right direction—up or down—can impact billions of dollars in investments and customer bills. Put simply, we cannot efficiently plan the electric generation and transmission needed to serve new customers if we don’t forecast how much energy they will need as accurately as possible.”
Rosner, a Democrat who will step down as FERC chairman when two Republican nominees are able to win Senate confirmation are sworn in and President Trump appoints one of them as chairman, wrote, “Our experience to date tells us that large loads, such as data centers, have characteristics that call for new and improved forecasting methods.
“Given the size and volume of new large load interconnection requests, I’m optimistic that utilities have an opportunity to apply similar criteria to those currently used to assess the commercial readiness of large projects in the generator interconnection queue. These objective criteria include observable milestones such as contracts, financial security deposits, and physical site control.”
He said he would like to “open a dialogue” on four basic questions:
“How do you, the utilities in your footprint, and state regulators obtain information that verifies when and whether prospective large loads in your region will reach commercial operation?
“To what extent are prospective large load requests subject to consistent, objective screening criteria before they are included in the load forecast?
“How do you forecast how the actual electricity consumption of a large load will compare to its requested level of interconnection service?
“How do you coordinate with utilities at the regional or interregional level to share best practices on large load forecasting and ensure that large load interconnection requests are not double-counted?”
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last week (Sept. 11) approved Trump’s nominations of Laura Swett and David LaCerte to fill the vacant FERC slots by a 12-8 party line majority (with Maine independent Angus King voting with the GOP). Both are lawyers. Swett has worked as a FERC staffer. LaCerte has limited energy experience. Both pledged to uphold FERC’s statutory independence during committee scrutiny. When the nominations might come to a full Senate vote is uncertain.
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