NERC Proposes To Streamline Violation Processing To Reduce Administrative Burden

At the NERC Board of Trustees meeting this week in Vancouver, Canada, NERC outlined a new initiative intended to reduce the administrative burden on Registered Entities associated with the processing of Reliability Standard violations. The procedure, which has yet to be spelled out in detail, would adjust the administrative process based on the risk to bulk power system reliability presented by a given violation.

Under NERC's proposal, each Reliability Standard violation must continue to be identified and remedied, but only those violations posing a "serious risk" to bulk power system reliability will be filed with FERC as a Notice of Penalty. Violations presenting only a low-reliability risk will be addressed through what NERC describes as a "find, fix, track and report" process. No matter which process is used for a violation, the violations will continue to be reported to FERC. However, rather than NERC's past practice of sporadic reporting, NERC will make monthly