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North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC)

North American Electric Reliability Corporation
CITATION http://www.nerc.com/
SUMMARY NERC’s mission is to ensure the reliability of the North American bulk power system. NERC is the electric reliability organization certified by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to establish and enforce reliability standards for the bulk-power systems. A complete set of the reliability standards is available here.
DATA COVERED Non-Personally Identifiable Information – technical data related to the operations of the Bulk Electric Systems of North America, such as power-balancing, operations monitoring and other technical information related to the day-to-day operations of the power system.
INDUSTRY Bulk Electric System of North America
PENALTIES

In the United States, NERC and the eight regional entities [1] charged with compliance enforcement monitor compliance via a number of methods, including regular and scheduled compliance audits, random spot checks, and specific investigations as warranted by indications that a standard may have been violated.

Whenever a possible violation is discovered, a thorough review is conducted prior to issuing a formal notice of alleged violation to the involved user, owner, or operator. Once fully vetted, the violation is confirmed and sent to NERC for approval. NERC then typically engages in a series of negotiations with the entity in an effort to settle any disputes and accept any associated penalties. When an agreement has been reached, the agreement must be approved by NERC’s Board of Trustees Compliance Committee. At this point, the information becomes publicly available and will be posted on NERC’s website.

Guidelines on the NERC’s Sanctions can be found here.

The Federal Power Act provides for penalties of up to one million dollars ($1,000,000) per day for each day of a violation. Sanctions are significantly less in Canada.

[1] Regional entities include: Florida Reliability Coordinating Council (FRCC), Midwest Reliability Organization (MRO), Northeast Power Coordinating Council (NPCC), ReliabilityFirst Corporation (RFC), SERC Reliability Corporation (SERC), Southwest Power Pool, RE (SPP), Texas Reliability Entity (TRE) and the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC).
United States - English