Spotlight Articles

Today's LiveWire Spotlight assesses the Commission’s recent approval of TPL-001-5, the updated Transmission Planning Performance Standard addressing Protection System single points of failure.  Going forward, planners must treat simultaneous single-phase…

Today's LiveWire Spotlight describes our analysis of NERC’s Notices of Penalty in 4Q2019.  During the quarter, the ERO posted five filings using the unabridged Notice of Penalty (NOP) Process –…

Today's LiveWire Spotlight looks at two new proposed Implementation Guidance documents developed by the North American Transmission Forum (NATF) addressing CIP-005-6 and CIP-010-2.  Once endorsed by the ERO Enterprise, auditors…

Today's LiveWire Spotlight examines NERC’s latest Long-Term Reliability Assessment of the Bulk Power System's reliability, adequacy, and security over the 10-year planning horizon.  After analyzing demand forecasts, resource capacity growth, and…

Today's LiveWire Spotlight evaluates NERC's detailed recap and analysis of the eighteen-minute oscillation event which set off alarms or alerts at nearly every Control Center in the Eastern Interconnection on January…

Today's LiveWire Spotlight looks at NERC's findings in response to FERC's concerns related to the exceptions to the restoration timing requirements allowed in BAL-002-2.  Their analysis relies on DCS data voluntarily…

Today's LiveWire Spotlight evaluates a proposed Reliability Guideline that offers Bulk Power System regulatory perspectives for state utility commissions and Registered Entities looking to adopt IEEE 1547-2018.   It was authored by…

Today's LiveWire Spotlight looks at the first postings of CIP-004-7 and CIP-011-3 - modified to allow alternative protective strategies that secure access to BES Cyber System Information (BCSI).  The updates…

Today's LiveWire Spotlight assesses a new NERC’s Lesson Learned recounting two incidents at the same facility touched off by the failure of newly installed hermetically sealed metering current transformers (CTs).  Both…

Today's LiveWire Spotlight evaluates NERC's latest three-year plan mapping out the standards development activity that they expect to process in 2020 and beyond.  Projects addressing FERC directives are prioritized the highest – and only…

Today's LiveWire Spotlight examines Version 4 of the ERO's Event Analysis Process, which was recently approved by NERC’s Operating Committee after a periodic review by subject matter experts and vetted…

Today's LiveWire Spotlight looks at the second version of the 2020 Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement Program (CMEP) implementation plan.  Three changes have been made to the original version: 1. Monitoring Schedules…

Today's LiveWire Spotlight assesses the initial posting of BAL-001-TRE-2 which proposes three substantive changes addressing issues that were discovered after the original version was implemented and requiring work arounds to…

Today's LiveWire Spotlight looks at the updates to two NERC standards which become mandatory and effective in the U.S. next month.  CIP-003-7 will strengthen the cyber protections required of Low-Impact BES Cyber Systems…

Today's LiveWire Spotlight examines NERC’s 2019-2020 Winter Reliability Assessment which consolidates forecast and resource capacity data across North America to determine if the BPS will perform reliably and adequately over…

Today's LiveWire Spotlight assesses NERC’s latest Frequency Response Filing, which analyzes the calculation of the Interconnection Frequency Response Obligations (IFROs) that will be apportioned out to Balancing Authorities next year.  Only…

Today's LiveWire Spotlight looks at FERC’s Transmission Line Ratings Conference held last September 10 and 11 in Washington D.C.  Five panels were conducted during the event addressing the cost/benefit tradeoffs between…

Today's LiveWire Spotlight evaluates the first application of the approach developed by NERC to transition the “Guidelines and Technical Basis” section of every standard to (potentially) two other documents -…

Today's LiveWire Spotlight examines Draft 4 of CIP-002-6, which looks to modify a criterion that improperly categorizes very small TO Control Centers as Medium-Impact despite their minimal impact on BES reliability. …

Today's LiveWire Spotlight looks at the initial versions of seven standards that have been modified in accordance with the Risk-Based Registration (RBR) Initiative.  Once approved, the Load-Serving Entity references in…