Ten years ago, every city between Detroit and Ottawa, including New York, turned dark in what became known as the Northeast blackout of 2003, the most severe power outage to ever occur in the industrialized world. For the next four days the lives of 50 million Americans and Canadians were turned upside down, and, due to the blackout, the lives of eleven ended.

Airports, ground transportation systems, banks and stock markets were shut down; cellular communication and cable TV services were disrupted; and millions were forced to boil their water and, absent air conditioning, swelter in a 90 degree summer heat.

The immediate official response of US authorities was taken out of a South Park episode: blame Canada. But as time progressed the true culprit was revealed. A sagging power line in Ohio touched an untrimmed tree branch triggering a cascading grid failure across the Northeast U.S. and large parts of Ontario. Hitting America's economic hub, the outage exposed the fragility of our electricity grid.

For further reading:  http://energybiz.com/article/13/10/clearing-great-blackout-2003&utm_medium=eNL&utm_campaign=EB_DAILY&utm_term=Original-Member

After successfully submitting data, the quarter status on the checklist will update to “data entered” for the quarter you are submitting data for. Occasionally the program will find some minor errors with event and performance hours not matching up correctly even with this status. It is always good practice to review the validation failure report to find any possible discrepancies with out of sync data in comparison of each record. This can be easily done by first navigating to reporting > reports > validation failure by using the toolbar at the top of the screen. There is a filtering option on the right side of the validation failure screen which will allow you to filter by “Not in Sync Only”. 

NERC submits its request for acceptance of NERC’s 2014 Business Plan and Budget filing and the 2014 Business Plans and Budgets of the  Regional  Entities  and  for  the  approval  of  proposed assessments to fund budgets.

2014 Business Plans and Budgets of NERC - August 23, 2013

"Many years ago,  NERC developed  pc-GAR,  a legacy software application,  to provide industry  and  vendors  restricted  access  to  limited  GADS  information  for benchmarking and other reliability improvement initiatives. NERC developed it when the provision of generator data was voluntary.  In exchange for providing this data, companies received a restricted license for access to certain summary data from the system.  Some  generator  major  equipment  vendors  have  also  requested  and  been granted  restricted  licenses  for  access  to  this  data  in  order  to  benchmark  and improve their equipment.

"Historically, NERC charged nominal license fees to help defray a portion of the costs of  operating,  maintaining,  and  administering  this  complex  legacy  software.  In response to  its 2013 business plan and budget  (in which  NERC expressed the intent to  discontinue  the  licensing  of  this  software  and  data  availability),  NERC  received comments  from  industry  expressing  a  strong  desire  for  continuing  access  so  that they  could  continue  to  undertake  the  reliability  assessment  and  improvement activities generally described above. NERC management considered transferring the licensing  of  the  software  to  a  third  party  but  felt  that  it  was  important  to  retain control of the licensing in order to ensure the protection of confidential information.

"NERC expects to commence  development of a replacement software application in 2013  and  therefore  no  specific  funding  is  included  in  the  2014  business  plan  and budget  for this activity.  However, given that this work has not yet been completed the possibility exists that funding from reserves may be required in 2014, subject to the availability of reserves and other funding priorities.

"pc-GAR:  Historically, NERC charged nominal license fees to help defray a portion of the costs of operating, maintaining, and administering  pc-GAR, a  complex legacy software  application used to provide industry with access to certain generator and transmission data. In response to its 2013 business plan  and  budget  (in  which  NERC  indicated  it  would  discontinue  the  licensing  of  this software and data availability and therefore excluded any projection of licensing fees in its 2013 budget), NERC received additional feedback from industry expressing a strong desire  for  continuing  to  provide  access.  Upon  further  view  and  consideration,  NERC management  felt  that  it  was  important  to  retain  control  of  the  licensing  in  order  to ensure  the  protection  of  confidential  information  and  that  the  assessment  activities performed  by  RAPA  would  also  benefit  from  the  continued  industry  utilization  of  pc-GAR. As previously described under the RAPA section of this business plan and budget, NERC expects to commence development of a replacement software application  for pc-GAR in Q4 2013 and no specific funding is included in the 2014 business plan and budget for  this  activity.  However,  given  that  this  work  has  not  yet  been  completed, the possibility  exists  that  funding  from  reserves  may  be  required  in  2014,  subject  to  the availability of reserves and other funding priorities. The  pc-GAR 2014 projected  fees  will be used to offset development  costs of the replacement application, as well  operation and maintenance costs or the existing and replacement applications."

Request for Acceptance of NERC’s 2014 Business Plan and Budget Filing  and  the  2014  Business  Plans  and  Budgets  of  the  Regional Entities