PRIA, Government Policy, Made Personal

Summary

The Secretary, working with the Commission, must study what level of electric reliability best serves consumers. The study must weigh cost-effectiveness and energy conservation. It must look at ways to reach that reliability and their costs, and ways to reduce harm from emergency outages and their costs. The study must examine costs and effects of investments in generation, transmission, distribution, and consumer devices; environmental effects; different kinds of utility systems and whether they need different reliability levels; alternatives to building new generation (including conservation); whether many small plants are more cost-effective than a few large ones; and any industry reliability practices for equipment, operations, training, and outage measures. The Secretary may ask reliability councils, other experts, or federal agencies to study specific reliability issues and must report the results to Congress. After public comment, the Secretary may recommend reliability standards to the electric industry (about equipment, operating procedures, training, and appropriate reliability levels). The Secretary must include those recommendations and what utilities did about them in the annual report to Congress.

Title 16, §824a–2

Conservation, Source: USLM XML via OLRC

(a)(1)The Secretary, in consultation with the Commission, shall conduct a study with respect to—

(A)the level of reliability appropriate to adequately serve the needs of electric consumers, taking into account cost effectiveness and the need for energy conservation,

(B)the various methods which could be used in order to achieve such level of reliability and the cost effectiveness of such methods, and

(C)the various procedures that might be used in case of an emergency outage to minimize the public disruption and economic loss that might be caused by such an outage and the cost effectiveness of such procedures.

(2)The study under paragraph (1) shall include consideration of the following:

(A)the cost effectiveness of investments in each of the components involved in providing adequate and reliable electric service, including generation, transmission, and distribution facilities, and devices available to the electric consumer;

(B)the environmental and other effects of the investments considered under subparagraph (A);

(C)various types of electric utility systems in terms of generation, transmission, distribution and customer mix, the extent to which differences in reliability levels may be desirable, and the cost-effectiveness of the various methods which could be used to decrease the number and severity of any outages among the various types of systems;

(D)alternatives to adding new generation facilities to achieve such desired levels of reliability (including conservation);

(E)the cost-effectiveness of adding a number of small, decentralized conventional and nonconventional generating units rather than a small number of large generating units with a similar total megawatt capacity for achieving the desired level of reliability; and

(F)any standards for electric utility reliability used by, or suggested for use by, the electric utility industry in terms of cost-effectiveness in achieving the desired level of reliability, including equipment standards, standards for operating procedures and training of personnel, and standards relating the number and severity of outages to periods of time.

(b)The Secretary, in consultation with the Commission, may, from time to time, request the reliability councils established under section 202(a) of the Federal Power Act [16 U.S.C. 824a(a) of this title] or other appropriate persons (including Federal agencies) to examine and report to him concerning any electric utility reliability issue. The Secretary shall report to the Congress (in its annual report or in the report required under subsection (a) if appropriate) the results of any examination under the preceding sentence.

(c)The Secretary, in consultation with the Commission, and after opportunity for public comment, may recommend industry standards for reliability to the electric utility industry, including standards with respect to equipment, operating procedures and training of personnel, and standards relating to the level or levels of reliability appropriate to adequately and reliably serve the needs of electric consumers. The Secretary shall include in his annual report—

(1)any recommendations made under this subsection or any recommendations respecting electric utility reliability problems under any other provision of law, and

(2)a description of actions taken by electric utilities with respect to such recommendations.

Notes & Related Subsidiaries

Editorial Notes

Codification Section was enacted as part of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978, and not as part of the Federal Power Act which generally comprises this chapter.

Statutory Notes and Related Subsidiaries

Definitions For definitions of terms used in this section, see section 2602 of this title.

§824a–2 Reliability

Summary

Title 16, §824a–2

Notes & Related Subsidiaries

Editorial Notes

Statutory Notes and Related Subsidiaries

Citations & Metadata