TOP-003-4 — Operational Reliability Data

Purpose
To ensure that the Transmission Operator and Balancing Authority have data needed to fulfill their operational and planning responsibilities.

Applicability

• Transmission Operator
• Balancing Authority
• Generator Owner
• Generator Operator
• Transmission Owner
• Distribution Provider

Effective Date
See Implementation Plan.

Requirements and Measures
R1. Each Transmission Operator shall maintain a documented specification for the data necessary for it to perform its Operational Planning Analyses, Real-time monitoring, and Real-time Assessments. The data specification shall include, but not be limited to: [Violation Risk Factor: Low] [Time Horizon: Operations Planning]

1.1. A list of data and information needed by the Transmission Operator to support its Operational Planning Analyses, Real-time monitoring, and Realtime Assessments including non-BES data and external network data as deemed necessary by the Transmission Operator.
1.2. Provisions for notification of current Protection System and Special Protection System status or degradation that impacts System reliability.
1.3. A periodicity for providing data.
1.4. The deadline by which the respondent is to provide the indicated data.

M1. Each Transmission Operator shall make available its dated, current, in force documented specification for data.

R2. Each Balancing Authority shall maintain a documented specification for the data necessary for it to perform its analysis functions and Real-time monitoring. The data specification shall include, but not be limited to: [Violation Risk Factor: Low] [Time Horizon: Operations Planning]

2.1. A list of data and information needed by the Balancing Authority to support its analysis functions and Real-time monitoring.
2.2. Provisions for notification of current Protection System and Special Protection System status or degradation that impacts System reliability.
2.3. A periodicity for providing data.
2.4. The deadline by which the respondent is to provide the indicated data.

M2. Each Balancing Authority shall make available its dated, current, in force documented specification for data.

R3. Each Transmission Operator shall distribute its data specification to entities that have data required by the Transmission Operator’s Operational Planning Analyses, Realtime monitoring, and Real-time Assessment. [Violation Risk Factor: Low] [Time Horizon: Operations Planning]

M3. Each Transmission Operator shall make available evidence that it has distributed its data specification to entities that have data required by the Transmission Operator’s Operational Planning Analyses, Real-time monitoring, and Real-time Assessments. Such evidence could include but is not limited to web postings with an electronic notice of the posting, dated operator logs, voice recordings, postal receipts showing the recipient, date and contents, or e-mail records.

R4. Each Balancing Authority shall distribute its data specification to entities that have data required by the Balancing Authority’s analysis functions and Real-time monitoring. [Violation Risk Factor: Low] [Time Horizon: Operations Planning]

M4. Each Balancing Authority shall make available evidence that it has distributed its data specification to entities that have data required by the Balancing Authority’s analysis functions and Real-time monitoring. Such evidence could include but is not limited to web postings with an electronic notice of the posting, dated operator logs, voice recordings, postal receipts showing the recipient, or e-mail records.

R5. Each Transmission Operator, Balancing Authority, Generator Owner, Generator Operator, Transmission Owner, and Distribution Provider receiving a data specification in Requirement R3 or R4 shall satisfy the obligations of the documented specifications using: [Violation Risk Factor: Medium] [Time Horizon: Operations Planning, Same-Day Operations, Real-time Operations]

5.1. A mutually agreeable format
5.2. A mutually agreeable process for resolving data conflicts
5.3. A mutually agreeable security protocol

M5. Each Transmission Operator, Balancing Authority, Generator Owner, Generator Operator, Transmission Owner, and Distribution Provider receiving a data specification in Requirement R3 or R4 shall make available evidence that it has satisfied the obligations of the documented specifications. Such evidence could include, but is not limited to, electronic or hard copies of data transmittals or attestations of receiving entities.

Compliance

Compliance Monitoring Process

1.1. Compliance Monitoring Process
As defined in the NERC Rules of Procedure, “Compliance Enforcement Authority” (CEA) means NERC or the Regional Entity in their respective roles of monitoring and enforcing compliance with the NERC Reliability Standards

1.2. Compliance Monitoring and Assessment Processes
As defined in the NERC Rules of Procedure, “Compliance Monitoring and Assessment Processes” refers to the identification of the processes that will be used to evaluate data or information for the purpose of assessing performance or outcomes with the associated reliability standard.

1.3. Data Retention
The following evidence retention periods identify the period of time an entity is required to retain specific evidence to demonstrate compliance. For instances where the evidence retention period specified below is shorter than the time since the last audit, the Compliance Enforcement Authority may ask an entity to provide other evidence to show that it was compliant for the full time period since the last audit.

Each responsible entity shall keep data or evidence to show compliance as identified below unless directed by its Compliance Enforcement Authority to retain specific evidence for a longer period of time as part of an investigation:

Each Transmission Operator shall retain its dated, current, in force, documented specification for the data necessary for it to perform its Operational Planning Analyses, Real-time monitoring, and Real-time Assessments in accordance with Requirement R1 and Measurement M1 as well as any documents in force since the last compliance audit.

Each Balancing Authority shall retain its dated, current, in force, documented specification for the data necessary for it to perform its analysis functions and Real-time monitoring in accordance with Requirement R2 and Measurement M2 as well as any documents in force since the last compliance audit.

Each Transmission Operator shall retain evidence for three calendar years that it has distributed its data specification to entities that have data required by the Transmission Operator’s Operational Planning Analyses, Real-time monitoring, and Real-time Assessments in accordance with Requirement R3 and Measurement M3.

Each Balancing Authority shall retain evidence for three calendar years that it has distributed its data specification to entities that have data required by the Balancing Authority’s analysis functions and Real-time monitoring in accordance with Requirement R4 and Measurement M4.

Each Balancing Authority, Generator Owner, Generator Operator, Transmission Operator, Transmission Owner, and Distribution Provider receiving a data specification in Requirement R3 or R4 shall retain evidence for the most recent 90-calendar days that it has satisfied the obligations of the documented specifications in accordance with Requirement R5 and Measurement M5.

If a responsible entity is found non-compliant, it shall keep information related to the non-compliance until mitigation is complete and approved or the time period specified above, whichever is longer.

The Compliance Enforcement Authority shall keep the last audit records and all requested and submitted subsequent audit records.

1.4. Additional Compliance Information
None

Guidelines and Technical Basis

Rationale:
During development of this standard, text boxes were embedded within the standard to explain the rationale for various parts of the standard. Upon BOT approval, the text from the rationale text boxes was moved to this section.

Rationale for Definitions:
Changes made to the proposed definitions were made in order to respond to issues raised in NOPR paragraphs 55, 73, and 74 dealing with analysis of SOLs in all time horizons, questions on Protection Systems and Special Protection Systems in NOPR paragraph 78, and recommendations on phase angles from the SW Outage Report (recommendation 27). The intent of such changes is to ensure that Real-time Assessments contain sufficient details to result in an appropriate level of situational awareness. Some examples include: 1) analyzing phase angles which may result in the implementation of an Operating Plan to adjust generation or curtail transactions so that a Transmission facility may be returned to service, or 2) evaluating the impact of a modified Contingency resulting from the status change of a Special Protection Scheme from enabled/in-service to disabled/out-of-service.

Rationale for R1:
Changes to proposed Requirement R1, Part 1.1 are in response to issues raised in NOPR paragraph 67 on the need for obtaining non-BES and external network data necessary for the Transmission Operator to fulfill its responsibilities.

Proposed Requirement R1, Part 1.2 is in response to NOPR paragraph 78 on relay data. The language has been moved from approved PRC-001-1.

Corresponding changes have been made to Requirement R2 for the Balancing Authority and to proposed IRO-010-2, Requirement R1 for the Reliability Coordinator.

Rationale for R5:
Proposed Requirement R5, Part 5.3 is in response to NOPR paragraph 92 where concerns were raised about data exchange through secured networks.