Spotlight Articles

Spotlight on NERC Lessons Learned – Latent Defects Threaten BES Reliability

Today’s LiveWire Spotlight examines three NERC Lessons Learned where latent generator frequency control and Energy Management System (EMS) defects threatened BES reliability. The documents look to enlighten industry of the effect that subsystem […]

Spotlight on an Analysis of NERC’s Notices of Penalty in 1Q2021

Today’s LiveWire Spotlight examines the descriptions, resolutions, and the penalties assessed for NERC Reliability Standards’ violations from January 1 thru March 31, 2021. The article provides the facts, risk assessments, […]

Spotlight on NERC’s Grid Security Exercise Final Report – GridEx VI

Today’s LiveWire Spotlight looks at NERC’s Final Report for Grid Security Exercise (GridEx) VI held virtually last November. At that time, 3,000+ participants from multiple industries (water, electricity, natural gas, […]

Spotlight on a NERC-WECC Joint Report – Multiple Solar PV Disturbances in CAISO

Today’s LiveWire Spotlight reviews a joint report issued by NERC and WECC analyzing four 2021 incidents in CAISO where an unwarranted number of solar photovoltaic (PV) facilities failed to ride through routine […]

Spotlight on Comments on the Proposed Updates to the GADS Section 1600 Data Request

Today’s LiveWire Spotlight evaluates 200+ stakeholder comments to the draft mandatory data request updates related to generator design and outage detail data equipment owners must enter into NERC’s Generating Availability […]

Spotlight on the Energy Reliability Assessment Task Force’s SAR Review

Today’s LiveWire Spotlight examines a proposed Standards Authorization Request (SAR) issued by the Energy Reliability Assessment Task Force (ERATF) addressing deficiencies in the historical analyses of available energy capacity driven […]

Spotlight on NERC’s Twelfth Annual Status Report on FERC’s Directives

Today’s LiveWire Spotlight looks at NERC’s twelfth filing of the Directives Status Report summarizing the latest status of open Commission rulings. In it, the ERO announces four directives were closed within the last […]

Spotlight on Stakeholder Comments on Electricity Market Modernization

Today’s LiveWire Spotlight examines 29 sets of post-event responses to two FERC-sponsored conferences held last year to explore options that enable the electricity markets to deal with the increasing penetration […]

Spotlight on a NERC Lesson Learned – Managing UFLS Obligations During an Energy Emergency

Today’s LiveWire Spotlight looks at a “teachable moment” where manual underfrequency load shedding (UFLS) options were reduced to the point where normally excluded service had to be disconnected to preserve BES […]

Spotlight on FERC’s Deficiency Notification Regarding Proposed NERC Rules Updates

Today’s LiveWire Spotlight examines a deficiency notification issued by FERC to NERC questioning the lack of underlying support given to a proposed modification to their Rules of Procedure submitted last August. The update […]

Spotlight on Draft 2 of the Low Impact Supply Chain Standard

Today’s LiveWire Spotlight examines the second draft of CIP-003-X, which specifies the low impact cyber security supply chain controls in Attachment 1, Section 6. The latest posting offers surprisingly few updates […]

Spotlight on FERC’s Letter Approving the System Operating Limit Standards

Today’s LiveWire Spotlight looks at FERC’s letter approving without comment the retirement of FAC-010-2, and the updates to FAC-011-4 and FAC-014-3 – i.e., the System Operating Limit (SOL) standards. The […]

Spotlight on Project 2021-02 SAR Draft 2 – Modifications to VAR-002

Today’s LiveWire Spotlight looks at the second draft of the Standards Authorization Request (SAR) for Project 2021-02 – which greatly expands the scope of NERC’s initiative to clarify the thresholds at which […]

Spotlight on the Third Drafts of the CIP Virtualization Standards Part II

Today’s LiveWire Spotlight is the second of two articles dealing with the modified updates to the CIP standards enabling the use of virtualization services without affecting legacy perimeter-based architectures. Last […]

Spotlight on the Third Drafts of the CIP Virtualization Standards Part I

Today’s LiveWire Spotlight is the first of two articles dealing with the modified updates to the CIP standards enabling the use of virtualization services without affecting legacy perimeter-based architectures. Today’s article […]

Spotlight on NERC’s Technical Reference on Oscillation Analysis Monitoring and Mitigation

Today’s LiveWire Spotlight looks at a newly released NERC Technical Reference detailing various methods to detect and mitigate wide-area oscillations. The document explains how to (1) conduct analyses that determine the […]

Spotlight on the System Operator Certification Program Manual Version 4

Today’s LiveWire Spotlight describes the latest Operator Certification Program Manual – the Personnel Certification Governance Committee’s (PCGC’s) official program document describing how System Operators may obtain and retain NERC credentials. The […]