FERC Implements Rule Changes

Federal regulators took steps Thursday to implement provisions of last year’s energy bill, establishing rules to limit the chances of blackouts and giving wholesalers more time to buy space on the nation’s power grid.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, at a meeting in Washington, set rules on how it would select an independent group to oversee and enforce new regulations governing the nation’s transmission lines. The new standards come in response to an August 2003 blackout that left 50 million people in the U.S. and Canada without power.

“Assuring reliability of the grid system is arguably the most important responsibility given the commission by the Energy Policy Act” signed into law last August, commission Chairman Joseph Kelliher said. The last three major U.S. blackouts were caused by violations of power-line rules, he said.

The nonprofit North American Electric Reliability Council has issued voluntary reliability standards for the industry since 1968. It was founded by the power industry as a self-regulatory group three years after a blackout cut power to 30 million people in the Northeast. That blackout was the largest in the U.S. before August 2003.