Emergency Preparedness and Operations Reliability Standards
Most of the world was stunned to hear that Hurricane Maria left the island of Puerto Rico completely without electricity. When Hurricane Irma hit Florida, utilities across the United States sent thousands of linemen and other utility workers to assist Florida utilities. The picture below highlights a portion of the visiting crews ready to provide help.
Photo credit: Eversource
Upon hearing of an island-wide blackout, I thought, “Crews drove across the United States to Florida. The effort required to send utility trucks and other equipment to Puerto Rico will be epic. Ferries will be in high demand.” And sadly, even before the island was hit by Hurricane Maria, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority had already filed for bankruptcy in July 2017. The Authority stated then it needed more than $4 billion to overhaul its outdated power plants and reduce its heavy reliance on imported oil. In 2016, 47% of Puerto Rico’s electricity came from petroleum, 34% from natural gas, 17% from coal and 2% from renewable energy. Most American utilities rely on natural gas, coal, nuclear and renewable resources. Fuel source aside, how does a utility recover from an island-wide outage?
In the U.S., the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has rules to address this very issue. And on September 20, 2017 the FERC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) regarding revised Emergency Preparedness and Operations (EOP) Reliability Standards (please note that the document is large and may take some time to load) submitted by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), intended to:
- provide accurate reporting of events to NERC’s event analysis group to analyze the impact on the reliability of the bulk electric system (EOP-004-4);
- delineate the roles and responsibilities of entities that support system restoration from blackstart resources that generate power without the support of the grid (EOP-005-3);
- clarify the procedures and coordination requirements for reliability coordinator personnel to execute system restoration processes (EOP-006-3); and
- refine the required elements of an operating plan used to continue reliable operations of the bulk electric system if that primary control functionality is lost (EOP-008-2).
I appreciate the work done by regulators and utilities to provide a reliable and resilient electric grid. Comments on the NOPR are due 60 days after publication in the Federal Register.