FERC Rejects Security Proposal from Utilities Group

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has rejected a proposal to improve electric grid security, sending the proposal back to the North American Electric Reliability Corp. for revision. The group must strengthen its rules about how utilities should assess and protect power substations and systems, the ruling says.

According to a Wall Street Journal article, the proposal would have required companies to develop security plans for any substation that could create enough instability to cause cascading blackouts if it were disabled, which could apply to only a few hundred of the roughly 55,000 highest-voltage electrical substations in the U.S.