Averting Disaster - Grid Reliability Issues and Standards

1
Averting Disaster - Grid Reliability Issues and
Standards

• National Energy Restructuring Conference
• April 1, 2004
• Washington, DC

2
NERC Actions to Address the August 14, 2003,
Blackout

• National Energy Restructuring Conference
• April 1, 2004
• Washington, DC

3
NERC Control Areas
4
August 14, 2003What Happened?
Ottawa
Montreal
Toronto
Buffalo
Detroit
Toledo
Cleveland
Akron
Canton
New York
Pittsburg
13134 p.m.
13134 p.m.
202 p.m.
30541 to 34133 p.m.
34533 to 40858 p.m.
40858 to 41027 p.m.
41000 to 41038 p.m.
41040 to 41044 p.m.
41044 to 41300 p.m.
5
Investigation Organization
NERC Steering Group
U.S Canada Task Force
Investigation Team Lead
Root Cause Analysis Cooper Systems
Vegetation/ROW Management
Investigation Process Review
Project Planning and Support
Sequence of Events
NERC Regional Standards/Procedures Compliance
Transmission System Performance, Protection,
Control Maintenance Damage
MAAC/ECAR/NPCC Coordinating Group
MAAC
Operations - Tools, SCADA/EMS Communications Op
Planning
Generator Performance, Protection,
Controls Maintenance Damage
Restoration
ECAR
Data Requests and Management
Frequency/ACE
NPCC
System Modeling and Simulation Analysis
System Planning, Design, Studies
MEN Study Group
6
Key Findings of Investigation
7
Causes of the Blackout

• Inadequate Situational Awareness
• Failure to manage tree growth in ROWs
• Failure of Reliability Coordinators diagnostic
  support

8
Violations of NERC Reliability Standards

• Failure to return system to safe operating state
  within 30 minutes
• Failure to notify others of impending emergency
• State estimator was not used
• Inadequate training
• Reliability coordinator did not notify others
• Reliability coordinator did not have adequate
  monitoring capability

9
Key Findings

• Several violations
• Compliance monitoring process is inadequate
• Differing interpretations
• Repeats past mistakes
• Data deficiencies in models
• Planning inadequate
• Technologies inconsistent
• Communications not effective

10
NERC Guiding Principles

• Specific information on all violations
• Improve compliance
• Greater transparency to violations
• Work closely with FERC, states, provinces
• Ensure public interest is met

11
NERC Blackout Recommendations

• Corrective actions
• Strategic initiatives
• Technical initiatives

12
Corrective Actions

• Specific actions to correct the direct causes of
  the blackout
• Certify actions completed by June 30
• Experts to be available to assist

13
Strategic Initiatives

• Readiness audits
• Performance audits
• Vegetation-related outage reporting
• Recommendations implementation tracking

14
Readiness Audits

• Audit all control areas and reliability
  coordinators
• Conduct every 3-years
• Reports to the board

15
Performance Reviews

• Modify NERC Compliance Enforcement Program
• Regions to submit results to NERC
• Provide list of non-compliant entities
• Regular confidential reports to the Board
• Specific violations
• Results of audits

16
Vegetation Outage Reports

• Transmission owners to report tree contacts to
  Regions (230 kV)
• Regions report to NERC
• Use WECC as model
• Regions to conduct annual vegetation management
  surveys

17
Recommendations Tracking

• NERC and Regions will track
• Implementation of recommendations
• Compliance audits
• Lessons learned from system disturbances
• Use successful regional processes as model

18
Technical Initiatives

• Operator reliability coordinator emergency
  response training
• Reactive power voltage control
• Cascade mitigation
• RC CA responsibilities
• Real-time operating tools
• Restoration review
• Time-synchronized measurements
• Reevaluate system design, planning operating
  criteria
• System modeling data exchange standards

19
So Where Are We?

• NERC Steering Group technical investigation is
  ongoing
• Recommendations approved by NERC standing
  committees, stakeholders, and Board of Trustees
• Implementing recommendations
• Finalize technical report this spring

20
Issues to be Resolved

• Role of FERC, NRCan
• Non-jurisdictional entities
• Funding resources and
• Migrating old standards to new
• Recommendations in final report
• Voluntary vs. mandatory reliability standards or
  Will reliability legislation ever pass??

21
NERC Actions to Address the August 14, 2003,
Blackout

• National Energy Restructuring Conference
• April 1, 2004
• Washington, DC