Status:
The 2nd draft of the standard and associated documents were posted for a 30-day formal comment period that began Friday, November 16, 2012 and ended December 17, 2012. The successive ballot ran from December 7 through December 17, 2012. A Quorum was reached with 76.47% and the Weighted Segment Vote was 33.23%. The drafting team will review the comments to determine the next steps.
Purpose/Industry Need:
Protection system coordination is an absolute necessity for the North American electric system to operate properly. PRC-001 is a Version 0 standard, and was translated from an operating policy that was appropriate in an era of voluntary compliance.
The Version 0 standards and recent updates were put in place as a temporary starting point to start up the electric reliability organization and begin enforcement of mandatory standards. However, it is important to update those standards, incorporating improvements to make the standards more suitable for enforcement.
Both FERC (within Order 693) and the SPCTF (in their report on PRC-001) identified significant shortcomings in the existing standard.
The purpose of standard PRC-001-1 — System Protection Coordination should remain “To ensure system protection is coordinated among operating entities.” The standard should be revised to:
- Assure that Protection System application and performance issues are coordinated among all related entities.
- Correct the applicable entities within the standard to reflect the actual functional responsibilities, as described in the NERC Functional Model.
- Incorporate other general improvements described in the standards development work plan and from other sources.
Address directives received from ERO regulatory authorities.
All comments should be forwarded to sarcomm@nerc.net.
