1. NERC Operating Committee Activities Update December 2013 and March 2014 Mtg

2. Current Activity Summary2
Items of Interest
New NERC Reliability Guidelines – “Generating Unit Operations during Complete Loss of Communications” and Geomagnetic Disturbances Planning Guide
Synchrophasers – Now and in the future
NERC Alerts
NERC defines SPS and RAS
GridEX II – who is participating?
Seasonal Assessment Changes – variable generation performance
Performance Assessments
ERO Top Priority Reliability Risks
Essential Reliability Services Task Force
Lessons Learned Cold Weather Event
BPS Element Outage Coordination and Governor Frequency Response
NERC Monthly News Letter

3. Current Activity Summary3
Items of Interest
NERC FRR Standard BAL Implementation Status
NERC Standard BAL Update
NERC Standard BAL Update
Periodic Review BAL-004, 005, & 006 Update

4. Current Activity Summary4
Items of Interest
NERC Reliability Guideline
Generating Unit Operations during Complete Loss of Communications
Posted for 45 day Industry Comment
Anticipate NERC OC approval mid 2014
Geomagnetic Disturbance Planning Guideline
A Reliability Standard has been developed and submitted to FERC that requires the development of operating procedures to mitigate a space weather event. Currently, the standard drafting team is attempting to define the size of the space weather event to plan for through the development of a guideline.

5. Current Activity Summary5
Items of Interest
SynchroPhasor Initiative
~ 1,700 networked phasor measurement units on the BES
Provides on-line, wide-area visualization and oscillation detection
Provides off-line model validation and frequency analysis
What’s ahead
Base lining and data mining
Alarm and alert settings
Calibrating state estimators
Congestion Management
Operator training using synchrophasor data in simulators
What is the value of SunchroPhasor to you?

6. Current Activity Summary6
Items of Interest
NERC Alerts
The OC is concerned that the right message is being communicated on a timely base. In addition, the OC expressed a concern that the alerts are typically issued to compliance representatives and not to operations management. Registered entities can have several representatives who receive the alert.
NERC Defines SPS and RAS
A report titled “Special Protection Systems (SPS) and Remedial Action Schemes (RAS) Assessment of Definition, Regional Practices, and Application of Related Standards” was issued dated April The special RAS/SPS Assessment was a result of a Standards Committee Report Request for Research and will be used to support the Reliability Standards Project drafting team, scheduled to begin work in Q1 of 2014.
GridEX II
Approximately 200 organizations participated in the GridEX II exercise (approximately 1900 participants) (more than doubles Grid EX I). The objectives of the exercise were to:
1) Communicate with each other, 2) walk through crisis response and 3) gather lessons learned

7. Current Activity Summary7
Items of Interest
Seasonal Assessments
The amount of distributed generation is increasing there have been disconnection during frequency events
Short-term – NERC should engage in current efforts to revise Interconnection standards with, at minimum, adopting minimum tolerance thresholds for variable resources.
Long-Term – develop guidelines as a reference with specific requirements.
Performance Assessments
NERC should develop a new approach and framework for the long-term assessment of essential reliability services to supplement existing resource adequacy assessments.
NERC should develop a technical reference document on essential reliability services, which include frequency response, inertia, voltage stability, ramping capability, and other operational requirements needed to ensure BPS reliability.

8. Current Activity Summary8
Items of Interest
ERO Top Priority Reliability Risks
Summary of Recommendations
1. Continue collaboration between NERC, the RISC, and Standing Committee leadership to develop a data‐driven reliability risk strategy development process that integrates with overall electric reliability organization (ERO) planning (currently being developed as the “Reliability Risk Control Process”).
2. Continue existing NERC efforts to control the risk associated with the high‐ and medium‐priority issues, as the efforts are well aligned and appropriately scoped relative to the priorities assigned.
3. Continue collaboration between NERC and the Technical Committees to develop measures for use in determining the success and ongoing performance of those existing risk control efforts.

9. Current Activity Summary9
Items of Interest
ERO Top Priority Reliability Risks - Continue
Summary of Recommendations
4. A new high‐priority issue based on consolidating several other related issues (entitled “Adaptation and Planning for Change”) should be processed through the post‐prioritization steps of the “Reliability Risk Control Process.”
5. Additionally, the set of issues contained in “Operational Modeling and Model Inputs” should also be processed through the post‐prioritization steps of the “Reliability Risk Control Process.”

10. Current Activity Summary10
Items of Interest
Essential Reliability Services Task Force (ERSTF)
The mix of generation is expected to change considerably as federal policies and regulation are developed and implemented by the states and provinces in North America.
It is imperative that operators and planners understand the potential and cumulative reliability impacts associated with the resource change and mix, potential capacity reductions, increase in demand-side resources and distributed generation, and more reliance on natural gas-fired generation.
The ERSTF has a multi-faceted purpose that includes technical foundation to the Essential Reliability Service (ERS), educate and inform industry, regulators and the public about ERS for both real-time operations and planning horizons.
Specifically, the ERSTF will reconcile a collection of analytical approaches for understanding potential reliability impacts as a result of the change in generation mix (additional renewable, retirements of large scale generation, etc) and how those impacts can affect system configuration, composition and ERS.

11. Current Activity Summary11
Items of Interest
Lessons Learned Cold Weather Event
Guideline impact
New lessons learned have been posted to the NERC website under the “Event Analysis – Lessons Learned” tab.

12. Current Activity Summary12
Items of Interest
BPS Element Outage Coordination and Governor Frequency Response
NERC Monthly News Letter

13. Current Activity Summary13
Items of Interest
BAL Implementation Status
Awaiting Rulemaking Order from FERC
Here are the words for implementing BAL-003-1
Compliance with BAL shall be implemented over a two-year period, as follows: 
In those jurisdictions where regulatory approval is required, Requirements R2, R3 and R4 of this standard shall become effective the first calendar day of the first calendar quarter 12 months after applicable regulatory approval.  In those jurisdictions where no regulatory approval is required, Requirements R2, R3 and R4 of this standard shall become effective the first calendar day of the first calendar quarter 12 months after Board of Trustees adoption. 
In those jurisdictions where regulatory approval is required, Requirements R1 of this standard shall become effective the first calendar day of the first calendar quarter 24 months after applicable regulatory approval. In those jurisdictions where no regulatory approval is required, Requirements R1 of this standard shall become effective the first calendar day of the first calendar quarter 24 months after Board of Trustees adoption. 
Requirement R1 cannot be implemented prior to the addition of Frequency Response Sharing Group to the Compliance Registry.  

14. Current Activity Summary14
Items of Interest
BAL Status Update
To be filed ~ April 2, 2014
BAL Status Update
Next posting for 45 day review with concurrent vote ~ March 31, 2014
Periodic Review Team BAL-004, 005, & 006 Status Update
PRT recommendation to eliminate BAL-004
PRT recommendations on BAL-005 and BAL-006 currently posted for comments

15. Questions