[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]
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