FERC Conditionally Approves NERC's "Find, Fix, Track and Report" Process

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ("FERC" or "Commission") conditionally approved the North American Electric Reliability Corporation's ("NERC's") "Find, Fix, Track, and Report" ("FFT") proposal in an order issued on March 15, 2012 ("FFT Order"). NERC's FFT proposal, which Blank Rome previously addressed in a client alert, sought to increase the efficiency of enforcing "lesser risk" violations of NERC Reliability Standards. These violations will no longer be handled under NERC's Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement Program but, instead, will be remediated by the applicable Registered Entity and then identified in NERC's monthly FFT information filings with FERC. The FFT informational filings will streamline compliance for these "lesser risk" violations, thereby permitting NERC and Regional Entities to focus their resources on those violations that pose the most risk to the bulk power system's reliability and reduce the large backlog of pending enforcement