FERC's Wood Sees Urgent Need for Electric Reliability Legislation
Reliability is an "issue that the 2003 blackout put at the top of every CEO's and pretty much a lot of people in government's agenda to make sure that we are both protected from any sort of terrorist action, as well as protected from reliability problems that happen due to poor maintenance or bad operational control or insufficient modern tools...at the heart of the 2003 blackout," Wood said.
One of his key initiatives as chairman of FERC has been to ensure the reliability of the nation's electrical grid, but the job can't be done adequately without the current energy legislation that would make voluntary electric reliability standards mandatory and enforceable.
"Until that bill gets passed, I do worry a bit," Wood told Power Market Today. "I think even when it does get passed, there'll be some transition time till we get that regime fully in place. And even when that's fully in place, I think you've got here a system that is designed and operated by humans and with that comes the possibility for error.
"But can that error be mitigated and can the impacts of an event like that be significantly reduced? Yes, I certainly think so, and I will have to say here almost two years after the event, all the CEOs that I worried would have kind of let this drop on down their list of priorities make pretty clear to me that it is still on the front plate and something they take very seriously."
On another subject "some updating is needed" for the Commission's landmark 1996 Order 888, which opened the monopoly-dominated power industry to competition for the first time. Wood is generally credited as pushing through major advances in the development of a nationwide electric power grid during his four years at FERC.
But 888 "was written a decade ago and, I think, much as we did on the gas side with Order 637, which cleaned up, refreshed and updated Order 636, some updating is needed for 888 because it still is being used in about 30% of the country to facilitate wholesale markets and needs to be as robust as all of the market rules that we have in place in the RTOs (regional transmission organizations) and ISOs (independent transmission operators)."
The chairman officially steps down Friday, with the chairmanship going to Joseph T. Kelliher. Wood has been recognized as being an aggressive leader in a number of areas. Taking over as chairman just prior to 9/11/2001, he had the task of cleaning up after the Enron debacle and the California power crisis.
Asked whether he saw politics in his future, Wood said that wasn't anything he would consider for awhile. "If I come back up here (to Washington, DC), it will be if the voters send me. So I'm not going to say 'no,' and I'm not going to say 'yes.' I'm kind of a mission guy. If there's a big ole' problem, I'll be up there to help solve it. But to just kind of show up on a ballot because I've got an ego to stroke, that's...not my style. So if there (are) big problems somewhere in the future, I'll be around."
SOURCE: Intelligence Press Inc.