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NERC issued its second Level 2 alert of the year on Wednesday to gather data on the bulk power system’s exposure to "foreign adversaries," at the same time the Department of Energy published a request for information on the industry’s practices for identifying and mitigating supply chain vulnerabilities for BPS...

NERC is requesting comments from stakeholders on changes to several reliability standards proposed by the team updating the requirements for determining and communicating system operating limits (SOLs), as well as on the team’s implementation plan (Project 2015-09). The posting was approved by NERC’s Standards Committee at its previous meeting in...

FERC on Friday accepted a slew of settlements for violations of NERC reliability standards, with American Electric Power, DTE Energy, Eversource Energy, Portland General Electric and Exelon among the utilities hit with monetary penalties by their regional entities. AEP’s violation carried the largest penalty at $1 million, followed by DTE...

The California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday rejected a huge boost in megawatts for the San Francisco Bay Area that CAISO insists NERC and Western Electricity Coordinating Council reliability standards require. In a unanimous vote, the commission agreed with Administrative Law Judge Debbie Chiv that adding 1,850 MW of capacity...

The Midwest Reliability Organization (MRO) covered a number of timely issues at its quarterly Board of Directors meeting, held via conference call on Thursday because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Protests, Racial Tensions Acknowledged MRO CEO Sara Patrick wasted no time addressing the protests in the Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn.,...

FERC is seeking industry comments on a proposed incentive framework meant to encourage utilities to make cybersecurity investments above and beyond the requirements of NERC’s Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) standards (AD20-19). Limitations in CIP Standards Recognized In a white paper published Thursday, FERC described the proposed incentive framework as a...

Citing concerns over the adequacy of NERC’s critical infrastructure protection (CIP) standards, FERC on Thursday issued a notice of inquiry (NOI) seeking comments on potential gaps in the standards and what actions the commission may need to take to improve them (RM20-12). FERC positioned its NOI as a response to...

NERC has asked FERC to dismiss a complaint brought by security activist Michael Mabee against the ERO’s critical infrastructure protection (CIP) reliability standards — in particular, CIP-013-1 (Cyber security supply chain risk management) (EL20-46). CIP-013-1 is set to take effect Oct. 1, along with CIP-005-6 (Electronic security perimeter(s)) and CIP-010-3...

FERC last week accepted a settlement between ReliabilityFirst and an unnamed entity in the Eastern Interconnection for violations of NERC reliability standards (NP20-15). In a notice on Friday, the commission said it would not review the settlement, leaving the $450,000 penalty intact. In a Notice of Penalty submitted April 30,...

NERC has submitted the first of two compliance filings directed by FERC earlier this year, providing information about its oversight of regional entities, the development process for reliability guidelines and the role of the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC) in developing reliability standards (RR19-7). FERC ordered the filing...