NERC Testifies Before The U.S. Senate Committee On Energy And Natural Resources

Implementing Reliability Legislation

On August 8, 2005, the President signed into law the Energy Policy Act of 2005. One of the most important elements of that legislation was authorization to FERC to approve and oversee an Electric Reliability Organization (ERO) that will promulgate and enforce mandatory reliability standards for the bulk power system.

On April 4th, the North American Electric Reliability Council, most often called NERC, filed applications with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the National Energy Board of Canada, and with eight Canadian provinces to become the North American Electric Reliability Organization, or ERO. These filings represent a major milestone in NERC's effort to become the ERO – a strong, independent organization with the authority to establish and enforce mandatory reliability standards for all users, owners and operators of the interconnected North American bulk electric system.

We hope that FERC will approve our application to be the ERO this summer, although much work will remain to be done to fully implement the reliability provisions of EPACT 2005. If this happens, I believe we can have mandatory standards in place well before the summer of 2007.

The reliability legislation that you wrote, combined with FERC's rule implementing this legislation, provide the necessary statutory and regulatory framework for an outstanding Electric Reliability Organization. You and the FERC have done your jobs in authorizing and launching a mandatory system of bulk power reliability standards. Now it is time for NERC and the industry to do our jobs. You should have very high expectations of the ERO. We intend to meet those expectations.

SOURCE: North American Electric Reliability Council