FERC grants NERC one-month extension to update rules seen needing improvement

Washington — The North American Electric Reliability Corp. will have an extra month to update rules related to its certification program and guidelines on sanctions that were flagged by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for improvement following review of the organization's five-year performance assessment.

FERC in January found that the electric reliability organization "continues to demonstrate its ability to develop and enforce reliability standards," and that NERC, along with the regional reliability entities it oversees, remain in line with statutory and regulatory criteria. But the five-year performance assessment filing (RR19-7) brought to light several areas in need of improvement, FERC said in its January 23 order.

Under the order, NERC must file additional information by April 22 that addresses FERC's concerns with its periodic audits of the regional entities; the effectiveness of reliability and security guidelines NERC develops to address risks; and oversight of the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC), which serves as the power sector's primary security communications portal for analyzing physical and cyber threat information.

The order also directs NERC to revise its rules of procedure (ROP) "to correct inconsistent E-ISAC terminology, to provide more transparency in [NERC's] sanction guidelines, and to address various elements of the certification program" NERC employs to ensure that entities are capable of performing the reliability functions they are registered or seek to be registered to perform.

Those ROP changes had been due to the commission July 21, but NERC sought a filing extension to better align the deadline with its internal notice and comment procedures and facilitate coordination with a broader ROP project examining enhancements to the registration and certification program that was underway prior to FERC's January order.

Good cause

The commission Friday agreed that there was good cause to grant the extension, and changed the filing deadline to August 28, as requested by NERC.

NERC's bylaws require that the proposed ROP revisions be posted on the organization's website and that stakeholders be provided with a 45-day comment period, with an additional opportunity for comment on subsequent revisions prompted by stakeholder feedback. NERC must respond to stakeholder comments and post those responses to the website as well. Then, the organization must grant its NERC Board of Trustees sufficient time, usually 15 days, to review the proposal and comments before the board meeting.

With the extension, NERC's board will review the ROP revisions at an August 20 board meeting, rather than at the May 13 meeting NERC argued would have been a far less feasible deadline by which to complete its drafting, notice, and review processes.