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Numerous trade groups seek more time to craft comments on resilience initiative

Asserting that reviewing the voluminous filings submitted recently by the nation's grid operators "will be time and resource intensive," almost a dozen large power and natural gas industry trade groups asked FERC to extend the deadline for interested parties to weigh in on the agency's proceeding aimed at ensuring the resilience of the bulk power system.

The groups — which include the American Wind Energy Association, American Public Power Association, Electric Power Supply Association, Electricity Consumers Resource Council, Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, Natural Gas Supply Association and Solar Energy Industries Association — said a 30-day extension of the current April 9 reply comment deadline "will help ensure that a robust record is developed."

It also will allow stakeholders to give the unique issues each regional transmission organization or independent system operator identified in its March 9 filing "the careful attention [they deserve] and formulate reply comments that will provide a more fulsome record to assist the commission's efforts to evaluate the resilience of the bulk power system in each region," according to the groups, which also include the Advanced Energy Economy, American Council on Renewable Energy, American Petroleum Institute and Independent Petroleum Association of America.

When FERC in early January rejected as legally unsupported a proposal (FERC docket RM18-1) by the U.S. Department of Energy aimed at propping up financially strapped baseload generating facilities, it also initiated a new proceeding (FERC docket AD18-7) specifically to address certain concerns underlying that proposal, namely, ensuring the resilience of the U.S. power grid. The commission gave the nation's RTOs and ISOs 60 days to submit filings defining the term resilience, describing the threats potentially impacting system resilience in their regions, outlining the steps they have taken to ensure that resilience, and offering suggestions on action that can be taken going forward. A deadline for submitting reply comments was set for 30 days thereafter.

In addition to voicing their concern regarding the sheer volume of the RTO/ISO filings stakeholders are tasked with reviewing, the trade groups also noted that the reply comment deadline "comes at an unusually busy time" for the energy industry. Among other things, they cited two major two-day technical conferences that are coming up — one on grid operator interconnection coordination (FERC docket AD18-8) scheduled for April 3-4 and another on removing barriers to distributed energy resources' participation in markets (FERC dockets RM18-9, AD18-10) scheduled for April 10-11 — during or immediately following the 30-day reply comment window in the resilience proceeding.

The trade groups accordingly asked FERC to push back the deadline for filing reply comments to May 9 and to rule on their request no later than March 21.