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Although grid resilience has become an increasing concern for regulators, their efforts have been reactive, resulting in pilot projects but no consistent policies or metrics for measuring success, speakers told the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ Winter Policy Summit on Thursday. "We haven’t found any commission in the country...

FERC last week approved a settlement between ReliabilityFirst and ITC Holdings subsidiary Michigan Electric Transmission Company (METC) for violations of NERC reliability standards, along with a separate settlement between RF and Michigan Power (NP21-5). The METC violation carries a $125,000 penalty, but no monetary damages were assessed for the Michigan...

President Joe Biden has suspended a Trump administration rule that restricts the purchase of bulk power system equipment from foreign adversaries, putting in doubt the future of the measure even as the industry mobilizes to carry it out. Biden ordered a 90-day review of executive order 13920 as part of...

FERC ordered NERC Tuesday to audit the compliance monitoring and enforcement programs (CMEP) of all regional entities by June 30, 2023, rejecting an alternative audit plan proposed by the organization last year as "insufficient" (RR19-7). The commission’s order, issued at its monthly open meeting, follows a June compliance filing from...

Industry participants support federal efforts to limit acquisition of foreign-manufactured hardware but warn that rooting it out of existing systems "presents significant challenges," according to responses to FERC’s inquiry on reliability risks from such bulk electric system equipment (RM20-19). FERC issued its Notice of Inquiry in September in response to...

FERC last week ordered revisions to NERC’s pro forma regional delegation agreement (RDA) and its RDAs with all regional entities while approving the agreements overall (RR20-5). The new RDAs took effect Jan. 1. NERC filed the agreements with FERC in June after the Board of Trustees approved the pro forma...

Citing "general agreement" within the electric industry about the potential benefits of virtualization and cloud computing services, FERC on Thursday ordered NERC to make an informational filing on possible modifications to the critical infrastructure protection (CIP) reliability standards to allow their use (RM20-8). Thursday’s order follows a Notice of Inquiry...

The Department of Energy on Thursday issued a prohibition order barring some U.S. utilities from acquiring equipment from China, citing concerns that the Chinese government "is equipped and actively planning to undermine the [bulk power system]." Affected by the order are utilities that supply critical defense facilities (CDFs), defined by...

FERC on Thursday proposed incentives to encourage public utilities to make cybersecurity investments above and beyond the requirements of NERC’s Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) standards. "As we’ve seen recently in the news this rulemaking cannot be more timely," FERC Chairman James Danly said at the commission’s open meeting Thursday, referring...

Supply chain rules from NERC and the federal government are increasing costs and procurement cycles for utilities and technology vendors, cybersecurity experts said yesterday. The recent cyber breach of SolarWinds’ Orion product, which gave Russian hackers access to multiple federal agencies, "really is a wakeup call," Tom McDonnell, power generation...