Today’s LiveWire Spotlight assesses NERC’s Notices of Penalty in 4Q2020 – which capture the descriptions, resolutions, and the penalties assessed for Reliability Standards’ violations from October 1 thru December 31, 2020. The ERO posted two Spreadsheet Notice of Penalties in the quarter summarizing eleven commonly-seen infractions attributed to six entities; resulting in a serious or substantial threat to the BES. Eight violations were assessed to two companies using the unabridged Notice of Penalty (NOP) Process – a time-consuming method reserved for only the most severe violations.
This quarter’s notice of penalty review indicates that NERC’s reliability compliance efforts are focused on three or four key Transmission system-related standards. Expect violations to be dealt with harshly – especially if an outage or threat of an outage occurs as a result.