Dive Brief:

• Regulators have reached a pair of settlements related to a 2011 blackout that left 5 million in Southern California, Arizona and Baja California without power for half a day.
• Western Area Power Administration – Desert Southwest Region (WAPA) will make improvements after failing to operate its portion of the transmission system within voltage system operating limits, which FERC said undermined the system's reliability.
• FERC also said the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) agreed to a $6 million civil penalty for three violations of reliability standards regulators say contributed to the blackout.

Dive Insight:

FERC approved two settlements related to the 2011 blackouts, including an agreement under which WAPA will improve its models by adding critical external facilities and facilities operated below 100 kV that can impact system operating limits on its transmission system. WAPA will also work with a neighboring entity to add reactive support in order to better support voltage on its 161 kV system, FERC said.

WAPA also agreed to make semi-annual compliance reports to enforcement staff and the North American Electric Reliability Corp. for at least one year.

In a second settlement, FERC fined CAISO for violating three requirements of the transmission operations and the facilities design, connection and maintenance groups of reliability standards. FERC enforcement staff and the NERC concluded that CAISO had failed to appropriately monitor the current flow on Path 44, or otherwise take corrective action to avert operation of the intertie separation scheme at the San Onofre nuclear generating plant switchyard. 

"Initiation of the intertie separate scheme contributed to tripping the San Onofre nuclear generating plant offline, and eventually resulted in the complete blackout of San Diego and the Baja California control area operated by Comisión Federal de Electricidad," FERC said.

Of the penalty, $2 million will be split evenly between the U.S. Treasury and NERC, and $4 million will be invested in reliability enhancement measures "that go above and beyond mitigation of the violations and the requirements of the Reliability Standards," regulators said. CAISO also agreed to mitigation measures and to submit to compliance monitoring.