Final Report on the Implementation of the U.S. - Canada Power System Outage Task Force Recommendations

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Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Background
  3. Implementation of the Task Force Recommendations
    • Group I: Institutional Issues Related to Reliability: Recommendations 1-14
    • Group II: Support and Strengthen NERC Actions of February 10, 2004: Recommendations 15-31
    • Group III: Recommendations to Enhance the Physical and Cyber Security of North American Bulk Power Systems: Recommendations 32-44
    • Group IV: Canadian Nuclear Power Sector: Recommendations 45-46
  4. Conclusions
  5. Annex 1: Principal Contributors to this Report

1. Introduction

The governments of the United States and Canada established the U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force (Task Force) in response to the extraordinary circumstances of the largest power outage experienced in North America. The mandate of the Task Force was i) to identify the causes of the August 14, 2003, blackout in large areas of the U.S. Midwest and Northeast and in Ontario, and why the blackout was not contained; and ii) to recommend measures to reduce the risk of future power outages and the scope of any that do occur. With the release of the Task Force´s Final Report on the August 14, 2003 Blackout in the United States and Canada: Causes and Recommendations1 in April 2004, the two governments extended the mandate of the Task Force to include monitoring and reporting on the implementation of its recommendations.

This final Task Force report documents the status of the implementation of each of the Task Force´s recommendations by the reliability organizations, the bulk power industry, and government agencies in the United States and Canada.

Some of the Task Force recommendations required one-time actions, and are identified as implemented or not fully implemented. Many of the recommendations, however, require an ongoing commitment not only to maintain the recommended measures over time but also to continuously review and improve the measures. In these latter cases, the Task Force considered a recommendation implemented if the following conditions were met: i) substantial progress has been made by the organization implementing the recommendation; ii) a plan, process and timeline has been established to implement, maintain and improve the recommended measures; and iii) there is ongoing oversight by an appropriate authority.

Several of the Task Force recommendations addressed to the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) have not been completed, but are expected to be fully implemented by the certified Electric Reliability Organization (ERO) through the development of regulator approved reliability standards. Therefore, for the purposes of this report, a Task Force recommendation that seeks to modify or create a reliability standard will now be considered fully implemented only after the standard has been developed by the ERO and approved by the appropriate authorities in the United States and Canada. Considering this process, it will be the responsibility of the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the appropriate authorities in Canada, not the Task Force, to assess whether a given reliability standard is adequate and should be approved or whether it should be remanded to the ERO for further development. The Task Force is confident that the process of review for proposed reliability standards will identify and resolve any known deficiencies in the proposed standards.

Section 2 of this report provides a brief summary of the blackout of August 14, 2003, and the actions taken by the Task Force to investigate the causes of the outage, develop recommendations, and monitor and report on the implementation of the recommendations.

Section 3 provides a description of the actions taken to date, any actions remaining to fully implement each of the Task Force´s recommendations, and the entity responsible for these actions. Section 3 is organized into the four groups of recommendations used by the Task Force: Group I, Institutional Issues Related to Reliability; Group II, Support and Strengthen NERC Actions of February 10, 2004; Group III, Physical and Cyber Security of the North American Bulk Power Systems; and Group IV, Canadian Nuclear Power Sector.

Finally, Section 4 provides some overall conclusions on the implementation of the Task Force recommendations.

1 U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force, April 2004. Final Report on the August 14, 2003 Blackout in the United States and Canada: Causes and Recommendations. Hereinafter referred to as the Final Blackout Report.