Cybersecurity, Reliability & CIP

“While nearly all organizations now use the cloud, today’s regulated utilities are not able to maximize the use of these technologies due to the lack of clarity within the NERC CIP standards and NERC’s Rules of Procedure.”

“It’s exciting to see customers who could not afford full facility, backup generation, in particular some nursing homes and medical facilities that may have only had backup generation for certain emergency pieces of equipment, now can operate during a major disaster.”

“It’s emulators or simulators that enable us to deploy some tactics, techniques, and procedures that adversaries use. It emulates that in terms of how far it could have gone, where would it have been stopped, where would we have observed it, where would we have been able to stop it, even if manually, but time to detection is the primary focus.”

“EPRI has expanded its collaboration with DOE’s national labs. This work has included case studies to explore specific climate resilience research questions, joint publications, and a series of workshops.”

“Tri-State’s members, including distribution cooperatives and public power districts across four states, will have increased flexibility to self-supply more power through a Bring Your Own Resource program filed with FERC on June 7. If approved, members would be able to supply up to 40% of their power requirements.”

“We are getting more sophisticated about understanding all factors that go into how and where we make investments. That also helps us defend investments to regulators and others, because we have the science, rigor, and discipline to justify them as prudent.”

“We’ve got over 450 weather stations deployed and take 30 years of data, crunch it, and get a good sense of what the forecast could be. Situational awareness is important because it’s a cost-effective method for getting visibility into the environment and is foundational information for all other mitigation measures.”

“We put effort into the bills, making sure all concerns the legislators had were addressed. We didn’t cross the finish line. We’re looking at what we can do without legislation, what’s under our power. We can ask the utilities to develop a wildfire protection plan.”

“Through EEI and the CEO task force, we’re talking to Congress and the Department of Energy and asking for options that don’t require us to serve as insurers of last resort for all damage associated with wildfire. Now, we are the insurers of a last resort and that’s untenable.”

Conversations with Puget Sound Energy CEO Mary Kipp, Hawaii Public Utilities Commission Chair Leo Asuncion, Pacific Power President Ryan Flynn, Rocky Mountain Power President Dick Garlish, with paintings by PUF’s Paul Kjellander.