Reconstituted Facility Ratings Task Force (FAC-008) Scheduled to Conduct Initial Meeting

Revised Scope Discussion

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) Reliability and Security Technical Committee
(RSTC) is a standing committee that strives to advance the reliability and security of the interconnected Bulk
Power System (BPS) of North America by

• creating a forum for aggregating ideas and interests, drawing from diverse industry stakeholderexpertise, to support the ERO Enterprise’s mission, and

• leveraging such expertise to identify solutions to study, mitigate, and/or eliminate emerging risks to the BPS for the benefit of industry stakeholders, the NERC Board of Trustees (Board) and ERO Enterprise staff and leadership.

The NERC RSTC Facility Ratings Task Force (FRTF) will address risks and technical analysis associated with
the FAC-008, Facility Ratings Standards. The potential areas this task force is evaluating relate to alignment
of industry’s processes and procedures to assess risk and analytics and prioritize resources with those
processes and procedures that focus on prioritization of reliability risks and corresponding resources.

Summary

Over the last few years, the industry and the Electric Reliability Organization (ERO) Enterprise have identified instances of discrepancies between documented Equipment, actual field conditions, and resultant Facility Ratings. Some of these discrepancies have resulted in the lowering of Facility Ratings and/or changes to the Most Limiting Element (“impactful”) that determines the Facility Rating; while some of the discrepancies impact neither (“non-impactful”). Currently, the Standard and, therefore, the Compliance and Enforcement approaches do not distinguish between impactful and the non-impactful discrepancies. Further, there is no distinction in the Standard between high “risk” Facility Ratings versus lower “risk” Facility Ratings. For these reasons, the joint task force under the NERC Reliability and Security Technical Committee (RSTC) and the NERC Compliance and Certification Committee (CCC) created the Facility Ratings Task Force (FRTF) to provide additional insights to the ERO Enterprise and the industry. Additional technical and risk analytics will provide guidance for industry to prioritize resources ensuring reliability of the Bulk Electric System as well as an appropriate risk response. In conclusion of the work, the FRTF offers recommendations and next steps for existing NERC committees to address the path forward. Current Observations There have been concerns raised about Facility Rating Methodologies considering specific equipment types that are not delineated in the existing Standard. This has been captured in guidance documents. The issues identified to date generally involve discrepancies between current field conditions and documented Equipment inventories and/or Facility Ratings. More specifically, the ERO reports that the discrepancies tend to occur as the result of the following:

• Lack of processes and controls to ensure changes in the field (emergency or otherwise) are being properly documented and communicated in order to update the Facility Rating
• Lack of communication between parties responsible for determining Facility Ratings (i.e., substation and transmission)
• Insufficient processes and controls to ensure Facility Rating are accurate when facilities are commissioned or when Facility Ratings are otherwise initially determined
• Insufficient processes and controls to ensure planned facility changes that resulted in updated Facility Ratings are either implemented as planned or, if not, that the Facility Ratings are updated because of the planned changes with revisions to reflect current conditions
• In addition, industry highlighted the following opportunities to address the challenges below relative to the existing Standard.
  
  • Need for recognition of different reliability risk levels associated with different BES elements.
  • Need for consistent ERO interpretation, Guidance, and Compliance/Enforcement practices regarding FAC-008.
  • Need for recognition of relationship between data discrepancies and reliability consequences, impactful and non-impactful data discrepancies.

Link

WebEx Meeting

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