 Okay, good morning everyone So We're a little cozy here our two commissions We're going to be conducting a joint commission meeting with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission To discuss topics of mutual interest to our agencies in recent years I believe we've been having joint meetings between our commissions about every two years the last one occurred I think just before I came on the commission So I'm looking very much forward to today's presentations and discussion I'd like to welcome Chairman LaFleur and the her fellow commissioners to the NRC We have our two agencies have an existing memorandum of understanding that facilitates interactions between our agencies on matters where we have mutual interest pertaining to the nation's Electric power grid reliability including cyber security related issues We have a very full agenda today We're going to have several topics to discuss and we're going to have a luncheon and a tour of the NRC Operations Center the brand new NRC operations center. I was just down there yesterday. It is again. It's very nice. You'll like it The first part of the meeting is open and is going to focus on grid reliability Nuclear power plant license renewals and dam safety and the second part of the meeting will be closed to the public and for that That portion of the meeting we're going to relocate to the second floor of this building So we'll take a little break to do that On the agenda for the first part of the meeting related to grid reliability We're going to be hearing from mr. Tom Thomas Burgess from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation Mr. J Arnold Quinn from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Mr. Bill Allerton from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and Mr. Brian Smith from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the second topic oops that was the second for the second topic on dam safety we're going to have Mr. Allerton and mr. Smith, so we're going to conduct a question and answer session after each topic Let me ask Chairman LaFleur if she has any opening remarks Well, thank you very much chairman McFarlane and thank you for hosting us. It's wonderful to be here meet so many folks from the NRC and I'm happy to have a lot of FERC staff here with us It's very important for us at FERC to have strong Relationships with other agencies at the federal and state level that regulate the same companies We do or other aspects of the same work that we do and that's particularly true of the NRC with our long-standing MOU Meeting today focuses on several Aspects of mutual interest. I particularly am interested in a report on the state of the nuclear fleet current and future We've been talking about that actually quite a bit at our recent our own open meetings because the fleet accounts for 20% of our electric Generation resource mix in the country very important to reliability. It's more than half of the carbon-free Generation in the country, so we're very interested in all the things that both of us do that affect the The long-term vitality of that resource, so happy to be here Would any of my fellow commissioners like to make any opening remarks Briefly chairman I just want to welcome our commission colleagues and chairman the floor here as well as she has noted This is not only an acknowledgement of our long-standing and close working relationship, but I think it's very timely as well I look forward to today's presentations and welcome Yeah, I joined my fellow commissioners in welcoming you here. I Think the idea of us meeting periodically is a great one I would also like to welcome the staff members from both FERC and NERC Who will give us presentations on the issues of mutual interest and I'm looking forward to our discussions. Thank you Thank you chairman like to also add my welcomes to chairman the floor and the other commissioners It's our turn to host you. I'm sorry. We don't have the space that you do in your facility but we do make do and Like again, I also like to welcome the staff of FERC and NERC And I want to also have a special shout out to our office's secretary Rochelle and And in her folks for working so hard to pull this together. I know this was a big effort. So good work and thank you Thank you chairman Thanks for coming this relationship between our two agencies is very important and I think this is a really timely meeting. Thank you Would any of like the FERC commissioners like to make any opening remarks Well, thank you again for having us these are not only helpful because we get a chance to talk to each other and develop the Relationships, but I also think it forces the staffs to work together and sometimes that's even more beneficial Than actually the public meeting. So again, thank you for your hospitality Great to be here. Thanks for hosting is look forward to our conversation Good morning and thanks for the the invitation to be here. I understand. I'm in Rochelle's chair Someone already told me that so thanks for borrowing letting me borrow your usual spot it I'm the newest to the Commission. So this is my first one of these that I've had an opportunity to attend I think the last one was maybe after I was confirmed but literally days before I took office So I've been in a full two years, but thanks for the the use of your space and look forward to a good meeting Great. Thank you. Okay. I think we're gonna turn to our first topic right now Which is grid reliability markets and extended loss of all AC power. So I'm going to turn over to mr. Burgess from the North American electric reliability corporation It's really a pleasure to be here and Chairman and the NRC and commissioners chairman of the FERC commissioners It's a pleasure to be here. My name is Tom Burgess and vice president of reliability assessments and performance analysis and in that capacity we oversee the development of reliability assessments and and gauge the performance of the Reliability performance of the bulk power system. So what I'd like to do today is provide you with a brief overview of the Report which summarizes the what we refer to as the state of reliability. That is our premier report Which describes the behavior the reliability characteristics of the bulk power system of the prior year That report contains key findings and it's based on a solid technical framework that arises from merging data analysis event and evaluations root cause reviews and represents an integrated review of reliability Next slide, please we Should be having slides. There we go So it's an independent review of performance it Attempts to identify trends and issues that potentially raise risks for the bulk power system reliability we use that to formulate recommendations and Use that as a risk basis to provide recommendations to what we refer to as the reliability issues steering committee which Ranks and prioritizes the efforts that we undertake to improve and enhance reliability It is an input stream to the development of standards the most important standards that we want to pursue An initiative that we've undertaken which is referred to as the reliability assurance initiative Which is also a risk-based approach to assuring reliability and ultimately it merges the concepts of event analysis reliability assessment and Even the cyber environment By providing an advanced indication or identification of trends and emerging potential risks We believe that we can get in front of those risks and initiate actions that can help alleviate the effects of those Risks or lessen the severity of those Conditions Next slide, please the first key finding is that The bulk power system has a sustained high performance level this chart is a Composite index chart which is comprised of all the days of the year sorted From the highest to lowest in terms of severity the severity is a is an index comprised of Transmission loss generation loss and load loss And so that severity risk for every day of the year then is Chartered and we can do a year-by-year comparison of the performance of the bulk power system on those measures In 13 our performance was as good as it's ever been in the years that we've been measuring reliability performance and so that is a Good measure second thing is that we also track in the small box there We track the high stress days which are occurring on the grid and in this case We have the no high stress days that exceeded five on our index AC transmission circuit availability remains very high at over 97 percent and AC Transmission transformer availability remains high at over 98 percent So all in all good performance on the bulk power system next slide, please We also monitor frequency response frequency response is a is a very important measure that Allows us to understand the behavior of bulk power system Generators, and we're observing steady frequency response across all the four interconnections that we monitor the eastern interconnection has a slight downward trend and But it is not statistically significant So this is an area where we want to continue to monitor the activity in the behavior in the eastern interconnection we've also shown on these charts of the various interconnections and interconnection frequency response obligation for each interconnection and there are some instances where the The behavior has fallen below that interconnection frequency response And so those are areas that we're going to continue to investigate and try to understand common threads Common trends common modes that we may be able to act upon a Couple of pointers is that we have initiated We've received approval on bow three. It's a it's a frequency response standard Which sets minimum frequency response obligation and it allows for uniform calculation of frequency response of frequency bias and so that is beginning to emerge One point to note is that currently Texas has probably the largest concentration of variable energy resources in the mix and that gives rise to some of the Of the dispersion in the data points there Next slide, please What we have provided here is I want to talk about two key findings that we've observed one is protection system misoperations and Failed AC substation equipment with respect to misoperations These are these cause more severe transmission events than otherwise would be the case There's a significant probability of their occurrence and they are correlated with transmission severity So the lines to the right have a high correlation with transmission severity There's about two thousand Operations per year and an average ten percent misoperation rate However, that range is in some regions from as low as five percent, which is a good performance rate to sixteen percent So the root causes that we've identified have to do with settings logic and design Have to do secondly with communication failures and thirdly with relay failures themselves This information comes to us from a series of different databases that we've analyzed We have a database on misoperations themselves and the mitigation steps that are being implemented We have a transmission availability data system database, which is applicable to 200 KV and above Assets and then we have events analysis were that Indicates that approximately 40 to 50 percent of all the system events that occur have some involvement in Misoperations, so this is a priority that's been identified by the risk committee We do have reliability standards that are underway to try to help address this and where we have a close working Coordination effort with the North American Transmission Forum to try to identify The three root causes and what we might do about addressing them next slide, please With respect to the other high correlation to transmission severity item Which is transmission system or substation equipment failures? We have formulated we've identified this we've Put together a task force to try to validate the findings and identify root cause Formulate some recommendations and solutions We anticipate that they would be producing this report by the end of this year in December of 14 We have seen some improvement in a particular metric that we have managed that we have been monitoring And I'd like to highlight one instance where we have identified a root cause We have initiated some action and that has to do with 345 KV SF 6 puffer breakers And we've identified a failure trend and Initiated an a level 1 alert There's about a thousand breakers across the system which are of this type And we've collaborated with the North American Transmission Forum and we have Gone in and done maintenance activities and since that service alert we have not encountered Any further of these type of failures So we'll be continued to monitor that to make sure that that that alert is effective next slide, please The final key finding that we have identified as is that the use of EE a level 3 have begun to decline And that's a good. That's a good news story EE a threes are those Where firm load shed is imminent or in progress to to preserve reliability of the local area? Oftentimes this is an issue with real-time adequacy whether that be fuels supply generation supply or on the transmission system There were only seven in in 2013 and only one of those was involved with actual load shed We also monitored other types of load shed eight load sheds that were Used to mitigate actual or post condition post contingency transmission systems. All of those were less than 300 megawatts and only Only one exceeded four hours, so we're going to continue to monitor this. This is a good news story and less EE a threes being required last slide So just to summarize these findings and these trends are used to integrate with risk control projects to refine our security metrics and Address integrating variable resources and a historic change in the resource mix We use event analysis actual event analysis and root cause analysis to make sure that we are Properly reviewing and evaluating our data and so with that I would be welcome to consider any questions Great. Great. Thank you very much. All right. I'm going to start off and with a really with a quick question As a result of the Fukushima accident in Japan, we have asked our power plants to Install additional backup systems to provide AC power in the event of loss of off-site AC power and they're doing so But I'm interested in whether you guys track whether Or how well Restoration of power after loss of power is done Restoration and recovery is an important area that we have we have done a number of activities on One of those had to do with a grid X to event that we convene last fall really to test the system to breaking and then and engage both our preparedness our communications and then our recovery steps that occur beyond that That's actually having a metric though on the actual conditions the actual restoration in the system We don't we do not have currently that kind of a metric. That's probably something that we should investigate Yeah, it would be helpful Especially for those of us who live in this area and constantly lose power and don't get it restored for a week or more It's a personal interest