In the wake of the ransomware attack Friday on Colonial Pipeline that shut off almost half the supply of gasoline, diesel and other fuel products for the eastern U.S., FERC Chairman Richard Glick and Commissioner Allison Clements on Monday called for "mandatory cybersecurity standards," similar to NERC’s Critical Infrastructure Protection...

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) | U.S. Senate After the Protecting Resources on the Electric grid with Cybersecurity Technology (PROTECT) Act stalled in Congress last year, leaders of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Thursday announced they had reintroduced the bipartisan legislation that would provide $250 million over the...

More than 40 electric industry professionals, regulators and academics joined this week’s EnVision Forum, sponsored by FERC and Virginia Tech. The two-day event — held virtually because of the COVID-19 pandemic — explored the "bold visions, novel theories and creative partnerships" needed to address the "innovations and limitations that are...

When FERC issued Order 2222 in September, then-Chair Neil Chatterjee declared it a "landmark … that paves the way for the grid of tomorrow" by opening RTO/ISO wholesale markets to participation by aggregations of distributed energy resources. Realizing the potential of DERs — including storage, electric vehicles and rooftop solar...

NERC will need to "scour through" its standards to keep up with the rapidly shifting generation mix in the North American bulk power system, particularly the spread of renewable energy resources like wind and solar, Chief Engineer Mark Lauby said at this week’s EnVision Forum, sponsored by FERC and Virginia...

The Biden administration on Tuesday announced it lifted the suspension of Executive Order 13920, issued last year by President Donald Trump in order to study and reduce the grid’s exposure to infiltration by foreign agents. President Biden suspended the order — pending a 90-day review — on his first day...

The West needs to build transmission lines to connect renewable resources to load if it hopes to successfully make the switch from fossil fuels to wind and solar while maintaining resource adequacy and reliability, FERC Chairman Richard Glick and NERC CEO James Robb said Friday. Glick and Robb addressed a...

FERC gave final approval Thursday for NERC and WECC to introduce regional reliability standard BAL-002-WECC-3 (RM19-20). The commission also granted the entities the extension they requested for the follow-on progress report that FERC ordered when it approved the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on the standard last year. (See FERC Approves...

PacifiCorp has 30 days to convince FERC it should not have to pay a penalty of up to $42 million for alleged violations of NERC reliability standards that may have contributed to the 2012 Wood Hollow wildfire in Utah, the commission ordered Thursday. The Order to Show Cause and Notice...

NERC CEO Jim Robb said Tuesday that his organization thinks more work will be needed to prepare the bulk power system for extreme winter events, even after the proposed cold weather standard (Project 2019-06) is finished. NERC CEO Jim Robb | © ERO Insider “Our conclusion, and we think FERC...