Dive Summary:
- Lakeland Electric (LE) officials will be audited this spring by federal regulators as part of a reliability standards law that started in 2007.
- The audit, which will be conducted by the Florida Reliability Coordinating Council, will be the third for LE since 2007 and they will be checked against a list of 80 federally regulated standards.
- Fines for not meeting a standard range from $1,000 to $1 million for each day a utility is in violation, but to date LE has never been fined despite receiving a warning in 2010 for not having a proper management structure.
From the article:
On Monday at a utility committee meeting, commissioners voted 6-0 to hire William Miller, a consultant who will help prepare the utility for the audit. Commissioner Keith Merritt was absent.
Miller, a recent retiree of the Lee County Electric Cooperative compliance department, will be paid a yearly salary of $127,500 to compile data and conduct interviews with auditors. Auditors are expected to be at the utility on April 22 and remain for about four days, said Jim Howard, director of electric system compliance and security for Lakeland Electric. ...
