FERC News

Subscribe to FERC News via RSS

On March 18, 2010, FERC approved the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (“NERC”) plan to implement eight Critical Infrastructure Protection Reliability Standards, CIP-002-1 through CIP-009-1 (“CIP Standards”) by generator owners and operators of nuclear power plants in the United States (“Implementation Plan”).  NERC’s Implementation Plan was filed on January 19, 2010 as part of a compliance filing in response to FERC’s request for additional information on December 17, 2009.

On March 18, 2010, FERC approved Tres Amigas LLC’s (“Tres Amigas”) request to sell transmission service at negotiated rates, with conditions on anchor customers and initial capacity offerings. In a separate order, FERC declined the petition to disclaim jurisdiction over the transmission facilities that will interconnect the Tres Amigas project with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (“ERCOT”) transmission system in Texas.

In July 2009, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, (D-NM), introduced a bill, the “American Clean Energy Leadership Act,” which would allocate costs for new transmission and bar FERC from assigning the cost of a transmission project to a region or “sub-region” unless FERC can prove the costs are “reasonably proportionate to measureable economic and reliability benefits.”

On March 5, 2010, FERC approved a settlement order under which the Florida Reliability Coordinating Council, Inc. (“FRCC”) will pay a $350,000 civil penalty for its part in the February 26, 2008 power outage in southeastern Florida. This is the first time that a regional reliability entity has been fined for violating a mandatory reliability standard.

On March 1, 2010, Larry Parkinson started work as the new director of the Division of Investigations at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC” or the “Commission”).  As Director of Investigations, Mr. Parkinson will report to Norman Bay, the head of FERC’s Office of Enforcement.