FERC Clarifies Guidance On Reliability Penalties

On June 21, 2012, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ("FERC") denied requests for rehearing of its March 17, 2011 Order affirming an $80,000 penalty assessed against the Turlock Irrigation District ("Turlock") by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council ("WECC") for the violation of several reliability standards resulting from a power outage.  North American Electric Reliability Corp., 139 FERC ¶ 61,248 (2012).  The vegetation-caused transmission outage occurred in August 2007 and caused 40,000 customers of the Turlock and Modesto Irrigation Districts to lose power.  A number of parties, including the North American Electric Reliability Corporation ("NERC"), several Regional Entities, and a group of electric industry trade associations, sought rehearing or, in the alternative, clarification with respect to four issues:  (i) load loss; (ii) self-reporting; (iii) size and nature of the registered entity; and (iv) adequacy of the record filed with