Responding to proposals from the newly empowered national power reliability experts, FERC late Friday approved eight new standards for the Western Interconnection, the nation’s grid west of the Mississippi River, in effect continuing certain reliability practices that are currently effective throughout the western grid. Proposed standards from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) were found to be more stringent than national standards, the federal regulators concluded.

As part of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approval, the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) was directed to make certain modifications to the standards when developing permanent, replacement standards. The eight standards will apply in the West, in addition to 83 mandatory reliability standards developed by NERC that are effective nationwide this month.

FERC’s action follows through on the industry’s urging that regional differences still be recognized as the nation strives for more uniformity in its power grid reliability criteria.

As outlined in WECC’s directions for implementation, the eight standards approved by FERC cover:

“The eight proposed reliability standards do not require responsible entities to file information with [FERC],” the Commission order stated. “However, the standards do require responsible entities to file periodic reports with WECC and to develop and maintain certain information for a specified period of time, subject to inspection by WECC.”

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