[Federal Register Volume 84, Number 131 (Tuesday, July 9, 2019)]
[Notices]
[Pages 32730-32731]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2019-14547]


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DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY


Codes, Standards, Specifications, and Other Guidance for 
Enhancing the Resilience of Electric Infrastructure Systems Against 
Severe Weather Events

AGENCY: Office of Electricity, Department of Energy (DOE).

ACTION: Notice of request for information (RFI).

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SUMMARY: Many investor- and consumer-owned electric utilities, as well 
as the state and local government agencies or boards that oversee or 
regulate them, are seeking cost-effective ways to make electric 
infrastructure systems more resilient against severe weather events, 
e.g., windstorms, floods, wildfires, etc. The purpose of this RFI is to 
gather ``relevant consensus-based codes, specifications, and 
standards,'' \1\ state and industry best practices, and other pertinent 
materials to provide guidance for enhancing the physical and 
operational resilience of electric grid systems and their components, 
e.g., generation, transmission, control centers, and distribution 
facilities, against these events. Gathering this information will 
enable existing requirements and expert knowledge on this subject to be 
synthesized and made broadly available to interested policy officials 
and other decision-makers. In addition, this information may aid the 
Federal Emergency Management Agency in its implementation of the 
Disaster Recovery Reform Act of 2018, as well as other federal efforts 
to enhance resilience. Organizing existing knowledge in this way will 
also help identify important information gaps that can then be 
addressed through targeted research and development activities and 
through emergency preparedness actions by government agencies and the 
private sector.
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    \1\ The Disaster Recovery Reform Act, which was signed into law 
on October 5, 2018 as part of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 
(Pub. L. 115-254), includes several references ``to relevant 
consensus-based codes, specifications, and standards,'' including in 
sections 1234 and 1235.
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    The U.S. Department of Energy also supports actions to enhance the 
weather-related resilience of other domestic forms of energy 
infrastructure, particularly oil and natural gas systems. A parallel 
RFI will be issued to gather analogous resilience information pertinent 
to those sectors.

DATES: Comments must be received on or before August 23, 2019.

ADDRESSES: 
    Email: Interested persons are encouraged to submit comments 
electronically, to [email protected], with ``Grid Resilience'' 
in the subject line. Comments, data, and other information submitted to 
DOE electronically should be provided in PDF, Microsoft Word, Microsoft 
Excel, WordPerfect, or text (ASCII) file format. The information 
received in response to this RFI may be used to structure future DOE 
programs and will be available to the public. Respondents are strongly 
advised not to include any document or information that might be 
considered commercially- or business-sensitive, proprietary, 
confidential, critical electric infrastructure information, or 
classified for reasons of national security. Submissions should be 
written in English, be free of any defects or viruses, and without 
special characters or any form of encryption.
    U.S. Mail to: U.S. Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Ave. SW, 
Mailstop OE-20, Washington, DC 20585, Attn: Office of Electricity, 
Guidance for Enhancing Grid Resilience.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: David Meyer, U.S. Department of 
Energy, Office of Electricity, 1000

[[Page 32731]]

Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20585-0121. Telephone: (202) 
586-3876. Email: [email protected].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Concern among government agencies, 
utilities, and the public about the risks presented by more frequent 
and more severe weather events has led to widespread discussion about 
how to make electric infrastructure systems more resilient against such 
hazards, and how to do so effectively and at reasonable cost. This is 
challenging to do, however, given the many uncertainties and variables 
associated with weather-related events.
    The specific purpose of this RFI is to gather available information 
on current consensus-based codes, specifications, standards, and other 
forms of guidance for improving the resilience of electric 
infrastructure systems against severe weather events, with respect to 
both the design and operation of these systems. The information of 
interest ranges from (1) specific technical design standards or 
requirements for physical system components, e.g., ``transmission 
towers sited in areas subject to winds between 125 mph and 150 mph 
should be built to withstand wind stress of XYZ mph, using xxx-grade 
steel or yyy-grade concrete or both''; (2) relevant corporate business 
practices, e.g., ``companies should designate a senior corporate 
officer responsible for the development, implementation, and ongoing 
maintenance of a company-wide resilience strategy''; and (3) analytic 
methods and tools for estimating the possible economic benefits from 
strategies, investments, or initiatives to enhance power system 
resilience.
    DOE anticipates using this information to catalogue and synthesize 
a body of existing expert knowledge about how best to enhance the 
weather-related resilience of the grid, cost-effectively. Accordingly, 
it is important for respondents to supplement specific standards, 
requirements, or practices with the rationale(s) relied upon in 
developing them and justifying their use.
    DOE also notes that some of the existing electric reliability 
standards developed by the North American Electric Reliability 
Corporation and adopted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, 
and those developed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics 
Engineers, have weather-related resilience implications and benefits. 
These standards are generally well-documented, and DOE suggests that 
respondents cite them where appropriate by reference only; submission 
of more detailed information is not needed.
    Regarding state- or locally-adopted codes and standards that have 
resilience implications, or for less well-documented requirements or 
practices, DOE has the following questions:
    (a) Scope and applicability--for any given requirement or practice, 
what hazard (or hazards) is the measure intended to mitigate or make 
the system less vulnerable against, and for which sector(s) or 
component(s) of the system is the practice relevant? Does the 
requirement establish a design threshold, e.g., ``design to withstand 
150 mph wind stress'', or identify appropriate hazard maps, e.g., flood 
plain maps, or maps of wind zones?
    (b) Origins--how or by whom was the requirement or practice 
developed, and did the process provide for consensus, openness, 
transparency, balanced decision-making, due process, or an appeal 
process? Could the chosen development method be applied to unmet needs 
in other grid resilience contexts?
    (c) Validation--has the requirement or practice been widely tested? 
Note: DOE recognizes that worthwhile practices for improving resilience 
may exist that are not presently consensus-based, and therefore asks 
respondents to include information about such practices, and whether 
further testing or refinements would make them more broadly applicable.
    (d) Are there other important caveats, not mentioned earlier, about 
the requirement or practice that should be considered?
    Interested parties are encouraged to submit comments and 
information on matters discussed in this SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION 
section, in writing and by the date specified in the DATES section of 
this notice. All comments received will be posted without change to 
http://www.regulations.gov.
    Please do not submit to the RFI information for which disclosure is 
restricted by statute, such as trade secrets and confidential 
commercial or financial information (Confidential Business Information 
(CBI)). Comments submitted to the RFI email address cannot be claimed 
as CBI, and submission waives any such claims. DOE plans to make all 
information received in response to this RFI available to the public.

    Signed in Washington, DC, on June 28, 2019.
Bruce J. Walker,
Assistant Secretary, Office of Electricity, U.S. Department of Energy.
[FR Doc. 2019-14547 Filed 7-8-19; 8:45 am]
 BILLING CODE 6450-01-P