On March 18, in a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) likely to have wide-ranging effects on the planning of transmission systems across the United States, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) proposed to reject the industry understanding of a crucial Transmission Planning (TPL) Reliability Standard developed by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), and instead impose a broader requirement on Planning Authorities and Transmission Planners when they assess the reliability of their systems under single contingency conditions and plan appropriate changes to their systems. Read more…