New FERC Task Force Unveiled to Address Transmission Shortcomings

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has launched a new committee charged with examining electric transmission enhancements.  The FERC task force, a joint initiative with the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), met for the first time in early Nov. 2021.  Here’s a look at the objectives for the new committee.

Nuts and Bolts of the New FERC Task Force

Overall, the main objective of the new FERC task force is to enhance reliability – not necessarily as it relates to what should be done today, but more focused on what this should look like years or decades into the future.  But, this must be done by considering the perspectives of all involved states, and must also be done with an eye toward realizing all transmission benefits equally instead of skewing the realization of the benefits toward larger load centers.

One of the first orders of business was to ask the 10 participating state regulators their views on potential market reforms, including whether it makes sense to revise regional transmission planning procedures to give states more responsibility.  Doing so will require a collaborative approach amongst the state regulators as well as FERC, something that will obviously be easier said than done.  In fact, putting aside the various jurisdictional differences was a bit of a sticking point during the kickoff meeting – which lasted for 4 hours.

Once the jurisdictional issues are sorted out, the potential transmission options can be reviewed and discussed.  I’d love to be a fly on the wall for these conversations!  Overall, this is a 3-year initiative, and it seems like the FERC task force will need every bit of that 3-year period to get anywhere.

In the final analysis, I applaud the new FERC task force because it is focused on options to boost reliability, which ultimately benefits the utility emergency preparedness field.  Although it may not result in a slam dunk, at least it gets the conversation started – which itself is half of the battle.