A recent report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) noted that key topics at its recent Board of Trustees meeting included:

1 – Approval of the ERO Enterprise’s 2025 Business Plan and Budgets,

2 – A progress report on 2024 work plan priorities, and

3 – The decision to invoke the Board’s long-standing “special standards authority” under Section 321 of the NERC’s Rules of Procedure to address a critical and rapidly growing risk to reliability of the bulk power system and a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission directive regarding inverter-based resource (IBR) performance.

This third one is particularly relevant to electric utilities. In fact, it is the first time that NERC’s Board has invoked its special standards authority.

“The North American grid is undergoing a significant, rapid transformation, and, while this presents new opportunities to advance grid reliability, it also presents significant challenges that must be addressed,” said Ken DeFontes, NERC Board chair. “The Board appreciates the efforts of the drafting teams and NERC’s stakeholders to develop the first set of consensus standards. This hard work is paying off; however, every day that implementation [of the generator ride-through standard] is delayed, the risk to the bulk power system grows. The reliability of the grid demands that we get these standards in place, so industry can begin preparing for implementation.”

As noted, based on the recommendations of the Regulatory Oversight Committee, the Board invoked Section 321 of the Rules of Procedure to ensure that systemic reliability issues associated with IBRs are addressed in a timely manner and that NERC is responsive to FERC’s Order No. 901 directives.

Project 2020-02 – Modifications to PRC-024 (Generator Ride-Through) is a draft standard that establishes capability- and performance-based ride-through requirements for IBRs during grid disturbances; however, it failed to achieve consensus from the Registered Ballot Body over multiple ballots, calling into question whether development would be completed by FERC’s November 4, 2024 filing deadline.

Section 321 provides the Board with the authority to address certain regulatory directives should the ballot poll and non-binding polls fail to approve a proposed Reliability Standard. Under this special authority, the Board directed the Standards Committee to work with NERC to host a technical conference, which is scheduled for September 4–5 in the Washington, D.C., area.

Using input from the technical conference, the proposed Reliability Standard will be revised as appropriate, then put to one more stakeholder ballot. If the standard achieves at least 60 percent stakeholder approval, the Board may consider it for adoption under this special process. There is a 45-day deadline to complete the process. The Board will consider further action based on the results of the ballot.

In 2023, FERC directed NERC in Order No. 901 to develop standards to address IBR reliability issues with three filing deadline groups – November 4 in 2024, 2025, and 2026.

In addition to the Project 2020-02 – Modifications to PRC-024 (Generator Ride-Through), other standards in this first filing group, which both reached consensus in their most recent ballot, include:

1 – Project 2021-04 – Modifications to PRC-002-2 Phase 2: Requirements to address disturbance monitoring for IBR (PRC-002-5, PRC-028-1).

2 – Project 2023-02 – Analysis and Mitigation of BES IBR Performance Issues: Requirements to address IBR performance issues (PRC-030-1).