Dive Brief:
- The Imperial Irrigation District (IID), a public utility based in California's Imperial Valley, has agreed to pay a $12 million fine related to its role in a 2011 blackout that left 5 million people without power in the Southwest.
- The civil penalty was part of a settlement between the utility, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC).
- FERC said IID violated 10 requirements of four reliability standards on transmission operations and transmission planning, including a failure to coordinate its operations planning with neighboring systems.
Dive Insight:
In agreeing to the settlement, FERC said IID conceded the violations were "serious deficiencies that undermined reliable operation of the Bulk Power System." Of the civil penalty, $3 million will be split between NERC and the U.S. Treasury. The remaining $9 million will be invested in reliability enhancement measures that will go "beyond mitigation of the violations and exceed the requirements of the mandatory reliability standards," according to FERC.
Among the enhancements, IID will construct at least one utility-scale battery energy storage facility within its transmission operations area. By the end of 2016, the utility must have spent at least $9 million to complete the systems.
This is the second settlement related to the power outage. Arizona Public Service (APS) previously agreed to pay $3.25 million for its role in the blackout.
