Today’s LiveWire Spotlight looks at NERC’s latest Lesson Learned — which analyzes three similar “teachable moments” where Energy Management System (EMS) upgrades resulted in situational awareness system failures that threatened Bulk Electric System reliability. All three incidents took place during the promotion process, where updated replica databases did not assume control from the primaries at the proper time; although for different reasons.
The loss of Control Center situational awareness for any reason is one of NERC’s top reliability concerns. Severe penalties may be levied if an electric system outage occurs, and it is found that an Operator did not act upon this Lesson Learned.
