Updates

September 27, 2018

New MOU with the Utilities Technology Council

The NATF and the Utilities Technology Council (UTC) recently executed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to leverage their collective knowledge, minimize duplication of effort, and promote collaboration in related efforts to provide timely support to energy owners/operators for the planning, management, and operation of the electric transmission system.  The intended collaboration is expected to help facilitate greater responsiveness to the needs of the industry generally, the NATF and UTC memberships, electric power customers, and the public.

For more information about the UTC, please visit https://utc.org/.

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September 21, 2018

EMS External Modeling Reference Document Posted for Industry

The NATF has posted version 2.0 of the “NATF EMS External Modeling Reference Document” to our public website for the benefit of the industry.

The document provides guidance to those working to improve performance of their energy management system (EMS) external models.  The intended audience for the document is persons with responsibility for development and maintenance of EMS models for real-time state estimator and real-time contingency analysis.

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August 03, 2018

NATF CEO Participates in FERC Technical Conference

NATF President and CEO Tom Galloway served as a panelist during the July 31 FERC technical conference regarding the Bulk-Power System.  Galloway appreciated the opportunity to provide perspectives on resiliency during panel II (“Advancing Reliability and Resilience of the Grid”), which focused on power system planning and operations challenges and opportunities resulting from the changing generating resource mix.

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July 05, 2018

July 2018 Newsletter Posted

The NATF posted a new issue of its external newsletter on the newsletters page.  Articles include:

  • Emerging Issues and NATF Actions
  • Distributed Energy Resources Document Posted for Industry
  • Inverter-Based Resources Webinars
  • Joint Modeling Workshop
  • Cybersecurity Supply Chain Risk Management White Paper and Guidance
  • Redacted Operating Experience Reports

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June 29, 2018

Cyber Security Supply Chain White Paper and Guidance Posted

The “NATF Supply Chain Risk Management Guidance” and “NATF CIP-013-1 Implementation Guidance” documents have been posted to the NATF public website for industry use.  

The “NATF Supply Chain Risk Management Guidance” white paper describes practices for establishing and implementing a supply chain cyber security risk management plan.  “NATF CIP-013-1 Implementation Guidance” is an associated document that the NATF has submitted to NERC for consideration as Implementation Guidance as an approach to comply with CIP-013.

These documents are geared to benefit members and the industry and respond to the NERC board resolution of August 2017 where it asked for industry assistance via the drafting of white papers.

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June 29, 2018

Distributed Energy Resources Document Posted for Industry

The NATF has posted “NATF Reference Document: Distributed Energy Resource Modeling and Study Practices” to the NATF public website.  

The increasing penetration of distributed energy resources (DER) is producing new challenges for transmission planners.  The reference document provides details to supplement existing documents authored by NERC and others that will help power system planners or study engineers prepare (1) DER models for interconnection-wide power flow cases and dynamic simulations and (2) DER impact assessments on the bulk power system.

Sharing this document with the broader industry will help improve power system modeling and studies being conducted to integrate DER into the Bulk Electric System.

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June 22, 2018

NERC-NATF-EPRI 2018 Power System Modeling Conference

The NATF, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) completed a joint power system modeling conference on June 20-21, 2018.  The conference brought together industry experts to discuss power system modeling and analysis.  Topic areas included:

  • Interconnection-Wide Model Improvements
  • System Model Validation
  • Modeling Distributed Energy Resources
  • Modeling and Performance of BPS-Connected Inverter-Based Resources
  • Electromagnetic Transient Modeling and Studies
  • Geomagnetic Disturbance Modeling
  • Modeling and Experience with Energy Storage Systems
  • State Estimator and RTCA Model Data Quality
  • General Transmission Planning Topics and Emerging Issues

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April 11, 2018

April 2018 Newsletter Posted

The NATF posted a new issue of its external newsletter on the newsletters page.  Articles include:

  • Redacted Operating Experience Reports
  • NERC Compliance Implementation Guidance Submittals and Endorsement
  • Cybersecurity Supply Chain Risk Management
  • Protection System Misoperations Report
  • External Coordination

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March 30, 2018

March Board and Members Meetings

The NATF held its quarterly board and annual members meetings in March.  Members approved the 2018-2022 NATF Strategic Plan and discussed NATF and industry topics, such as human performance, EMS, grid security and resiliency, CIP supply chain standards, system events and recovery, EMP, corrective action programs, electric-gas coordination, LiDAR, operating experience, and control-center design.

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January 26, 2018

January 2018 Newsletter Posted

The NATF posted a new issue of its external newsletter on the newsletters page.  Articles include:

  • NATF Program Overview: Practices
  • Resiliency Update
  • NATF Members and Staff Participation in GridEx IV
  • Cybersecurity Supply Chain Risk Management
  • New MOU with IEEE PES
  • Workshops

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January 23, 2018

New MOU with IEEE PES

The NATF recently executed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the IEEE Power & Energy Society (IEEE PES).  The NATF and IEEE PES agreed to work together and facilitate interactions on matters of mutual interest pertaining to the electric transmission system.  Both groups seek to more effectively align efforts to address reliability and resiliency challenges due to significant changes in energy supply, demand, and technology.  Cooperation includes but isn’t limited to (1) sharing technical needs and addressing challenges for infrastructure planning, modeling, system operations, and cyber/physical security; (2) identifying existing and emerging technological requirements and needs and approaches for addressing them; and (3) developing, disseminating, and sharing information related to the planning, operations, and maintenance of electric transmission systems and their component parts.

For more information, please see the IEEE PES press release

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December 20, 2017

December Board and Members Meetings

The NATF held its quarterly board and annual members meetings in December.  Members approved a memorandum of understanding with the IEEE PES and discussed NATF and industry topics, such as safety, human performance, CIP supply chain standards, system events and recovery, renewable energy, peer reviews, metrics, operating experience, situational awareness, and equipment.

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November 24, 2017

System Operations Workshop

The NATF held a System Operations Practices Group workshop in November. Topics included hurricane system restoration, NERC TOP-010-1 implementation and metrics, supplemental operations strategies (spare tire), transient and voltage stability in the control room, and alarm processing.

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November 08, 2017

NATF Posts Supply-Chain Guidance Documents for Industry Use

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Order 829 directed the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) to develop “a forward-looking, objective-based Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Reliability Standard that requires each affected entity to develop and implement a plan that includes security controls for supply chain management for industrial control system hardware, software, and services associated with bulk electric system operations.”  FERC noted the standard should address software integrity and authenticity, vendor remote access, information system planning, and vendor risk management and procurement controls.

Subsequently, the NERC board asked the North American Transmission Forum (NATF) and North American Generator Forum to “develop white papers to address best and leading practices in supply chain management, including procurement, specifications, vendor requirements and existing equipment management, that are shared across the membership of each Forum, and to the extent permissible under any applicable confidentiality requirements, distribute such white papers to industry.”

The NATF developed the following two documents to support the NERC request and to serve as guidance for NATF members and the industry.

  • NATF Guidance for CIP-005-6 Vendor Remote Access
  • NATF Guidance for CIP-010-3 Software Integrity

The files are posted on the documents page of the NATF public website and have been submitted to NERC for consideration as “Implementation Guidance.”

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October 12, 2017

Vegetation Management Workshop

The NATF held its annual vegetation management workshop last week.  Topics included program management technologies, compliance, safety incidents and promoting a safety culture with vendors, herbicide programs, environmental initiatives, legal challenges, contract-management performance indicators, and work-quality monitoring.

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October 03, 2017

Newsletter Posted

The NATF posted a new issue of its external newsletter on the newsletters page.  Topics include the Peer Review Program, new public documents, NERC Implementation Guidance submittals and endorsements, and workshops.

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October 02, 2017

September Board and Annual Members Meetings

The NATF recently held its quarterly board and annual members meetings in September. Members approved the NATF’s 2018 business plan and budget and elected new board members and officers. Discussion topics included resiliency, external collaboration, safety, security, human performance, training, transmission-nuclear interface, peer reviews, metrics, operating experience, and equipment.

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September 29, 2017

NATF Posts CIP and Resiliency Documents for Industry Use

To benefit the industry and inform regulators of ongoing work, the NATF has posted the following documents on its public website:

  • NATF Practices Document for NERC Reliability Standard CIP-014-2 Requirement R4
    • Guidance for conducting evaluations of potential threats and vulnerabilities of a physical security attack against a Transmission station, Transmission substation, and/or a primary control center
  • NATF Practices Document for NERC Reliability Standard CIP-014-2 Requirement R5
    • Guidance for a physical security plan—includes a template to help with CIP-014 R5 documentation
  • NATF Document for Implementation and Use of Transient Cyber Assets (TCAs) – NERC Reliability Standard CIP-010-2 Requirement R4, Attachment 1, Sections 1 and 2
    • Implementation guidance for members and industry related to TCAs; developed on a template conducive to NERC’s compliance guidance initiative
  • Transmission System Resiliency – An Overview
    • An update to the NATF resiliency summary created in 2015
The CIP-014-2 documents are updates to previously posted NATF CIP-014-1 documents to align with the current version of the standard.  All three CIP-related documents have been submitted to NERC for consideration as Implementation Guidance.

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September 25, 2017

NERC Endorses NATF Modeling Reference as Implementation Guidance

NERC recently endorsed the “NATF MOD-033-1 Methodology Reference Document” as Implementation Guidance.  The document, which provides guidance on model validation, is posted on the NATF public documents and NERC compliance guidance pages.

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September 05, 2017

NATF Training Workshop

The NATF held its annual Operator Training Practices Group train-the-trainer workshop in August. Topics included productivity, innovative training ideas, presentation methods for communication topics, training center technology, training OJT instructors, job performance evaluations, micro learning, and training multiple generations.

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