August 27, 2014

“Reliability” is at the core of the NATF’s mission and vision, but an increasingly important focus area for us is “resiliency.” These two areas are interwoven, with reliability improvements centered on keeping the lights on and resiliency efforts geared towards preparing for, operating through, and recovering from severe events.

To better coordinate ongoing efforts, the NATF has created a “Resiliency” initiative. Formal NATF initiatives are large, multi-discipline projects designed to address important industry concerns or issues. This new initiative incorporates previous topics of as GMD and EMP with severe weather, security (cyber and physical), and other hazards that could impact the transmission system.

In order to leverage industry resources as efficiently as possible, the NATF has been coordinating with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) on resiliency-related meetings and workshops. This year’s culminating activity is a joint NATF/EPRI Resiliency Summit to be held in October for members of both organizations and invited guests. The summit will focus on policy discussions and technical topics to sharpen NATF/EPRI efforts in using a new matrix designed to capture and guide our work products.