NERC Geomagnetic Disturbance Events (GMD) Reliability Standards: Comments Due Soon
With over 200,000 miles of transmission lines spanning from coast-to-coast, purveyors of the North American power grid, from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to the North American Reliability Corporation (NERC) and all the utilities and energy entities in between, must stay abreast of potential threats to the viability and reliability of consistent energy. In meeting this goal, the Department of Energy and NERC hosted a workshop in 2010 to discuss high-impact, low-frequency event risks to the North American bulk electric system, one of which was the risk of “Geomagnetic Disturbances (GMD).”
It sounds otherworldly. So what exactly is a “Geomagnetic Disturbance” and why should it matter to us right now?
GMDs are speculatively rare occurrences when geomagnetically-induced currents cause “saturation” of high-voltage transformers. In other words, the devices that are used transform the power from high voltage (large transmission lines) to distribution lines (small residential lines) are overwhelmed by an additional current added to the transmission system. According to studies cited by FERC, this “saturation” occurs because the interaction of Earth’s magnetic field and solar events (or “solar storms”) causes certain “geomagnetic induced currents” to flow up the ground wires that stabilize and assist transmission lines and through conductors such as transformers and transmission lines. Some studies suggest that this “saturation” could cause a sudden collapse of the Bulk-Power System by overheating a transformer if a GMD event occurs at precisely the right time under the right conditions.
Shortly after the 2010 DOE/NERC workshop, NERC created a Geomagnetic Disturbance Task Force (GMDTF) to study these events and later published a study which further defined the extent of this risk, its potential to cause damage to the bulk electric system, and the industry’s need for operational standards to manage these high-impact low-frequency event risks. Notably, the only event that has ever been officially attributed to a GMD event occurred in 1989 on the Hydro-Quebec grid, an event that caused a short-term loss of power (about 9 hours) to the area. Equally notable, however, is ta recent assessment of damages of a four-day power outage in the United States — in its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for GMD Standards, FERC declared that the value of the damage caused by four days of outage is between $4 billion and $10 billion.
After the publication of these several reports and studies across energy industry participants, the government took action on the possibility of GMD events.
FERC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) on October 18, 2012 citing various studies and the possibility of GMD events, requesting that NERC address this problem by creating reliability standards to address the geomagnetic disturbances. In Order 779, FERC issued its official request for NERC to develop standards for GMD events and requested development in two phases. First, the Commission compelled “NERC [to] file one or more Reliability Standards that require owners and operators of the Bulk-Power System to develop and implement operational procedures to mitigate the effects of GMDs consistent with the reliable operation of the Bulk-Power System.” In the second stage, the Commission suggested that NERC “…file one or more Reliability Standards…that require owners and operators of the Bulk-Power System to assess the impact of GMDs on Bulk-Power System equipment and the Bulk-Power System as a whole.”
NERC has currently drafted and published for comment three drafts of the stage 1 standards requested by the Commission in its 2012 Final Rule. Known as EOP-010-1 (Energy Operations Planning Standard), the standard will require operators of certain aspects of the grid to develop and operating plan for controlling and mitigating damage from these GMD events. NERC filed its petition for approval of these standards on November 14, 2013, and on January 16, 2014, FERC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to solicit comments from the industry participants and the general public.
Comments for this NOPR are due on March 24, 2014. Industry responses may be similar to those made to the previous NERC petitions for approval of GMD Standards. See NERCs Consideration of Comments on Draft 1 here, and Consideration of Comments for Draft 2 here. Some industry participants feel that compliance will be very costly and will burden energy consumers, and others have hinted that the somewhat “speculative” nature of GMD events does not constitute such a drastic, potentially expensive response. At this point, it is up to administrative processes to determine whether these standards will be approved as written.
To read the current standards, follow this link.
Disclaimer: The views, information, and analyses conveyed in this article are those of the author in his personal capacity and do not reflect the official policy, position, or assumptions of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), any agency of the U.S. government, or any other corporation, partnership, organization, agency, or entity. Information, assumptions, analyses, or recommendations made in this article should not be construed as legal advice or as an offer to advise and are not reflective of the position of NERC, any governmental agency, or any other entity.
