NERC considering push for stand

NERC considering push for stand-alone reliability bill

Washington  (Platts)--1Apr2004


With a broad energy bill stalled in Congress, the North American Electric
Reliability Council is considering whether to push for stand-alone legislation
focusing on reliability issues, Michehl Gent, president and CEO of NERC, said
Thursday. "It appears Congress is not going to help us" by passing a broad
bill anytime soon, so NERC and the industry are taking steps to improve grid
reliability in the absence of legislation, Gent said Thursday at a Washington
conference sponsored by the National Energy Marketers Assn. Asked whether NERC
would support a revised reliability measure introduced last week by Senator
Maria Cantwell (Democrat-Washington), Gent said "we're considering that now."
Among the steps NERC called for in numerous recommendations following the Aug
14 blackout was increased training for control area operators, and Gent said
he has been surprised that some grid operators have been hesitant to engage in
additional training.

NERC recommended that the training focus on dealing with emergency situations,
and some grid operator training systems are focused on day-to-day operations
and they are loathe to change their systems, Gent said. He added that the
upcoming final report on the Aug 14 blackout from the US-Canada task force
likely will include suggestions for a national standard on tree trimming since
insufficient vegetation management had been a factor in many outages and a
recent report said utility standards need to be improved. The final report
will be issued April 5, according to Alison Silverstein, senior policy advisor
to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Pat Wood and a member of the
task force.

This story was first published in Platts real-time news and market reporting
service Platts Electricity Alert (http://electricityalert.platts.com ).