Week 2 Homework Help – GM520.
Professor Dan Speckenzy

Student Name: ECPECO
Date: 1 November 2009

1. Administrative Agency: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), of the Department of Energy (DOE)

I chose FERC because it is the federal administration agency that ultimately my employer being a utility and a member of the non-government North American Reliability Commission (NERC) through which FERC imposes energy or electrical power jurisdictional and regulatory control. I chose the 60-day regulation on the books “Reliability Standards for Geomagnetic Disturbances” or RSGD regulation as it will eventually translate into physical, electronic, and IT infrastructure changes that I may be called upon to implement or collaborate implementation as an IT system integrator and/or systems engineer/administrator. This proposed RSGD regulation deals with developing and establishing reliability standards for mitigating the potential power interruption of our nation’s power-grid resulting from our planet earth’s geomagnetic field configuration disturbances (GMDs) caused by solar winds/flares generated by sunspots coronal mass ejection hurled at earth’s on a more frequent basis than experienced in the past, and the continued operation of the BULK-Power System.

2. The proposal is two-fold. First part or stage of the proposal is to require its FERC-certified Electric Reliability Organization (ERO) NERC to file reliability standard(s) within 90 days of the final rule effective date that directs power operators, owners and suppliers to implement operational policies, rules, directives, and procedures that will minimize or block GMD potential effects to the nation’s power-grid infrastructure system while continuing to operate and provide reliable electrical power energy. The second stage proposes to direct NERC to submit and file with 180 days (six months) of the final rule effective date reliability standards that imposes and requires the owners, operators, and suppliers the implementation of initial and continuing assessments of impacts of GMDs on electrical power equipment, installations, and infrastructure as a whole system. It would be a fair expectation that from these assessments owners, operators, and suppliers would develop and implement procedures and plans to mitigate GMDs, and minimize equipment damage, ensure quick response resulting in electrical power reliability and delivery consistent to the strategies and tactical assertions of the filed reliability standard(s).

3. My comment is that electrical energy is essential to our well being and pursuit of happiness. It is in our national interest hat our nation’s Bulk-Power Systems and resulting power-grid infrastructure needs to be safeguarded and protected to avoid disruptions to our nations commerce and business infrastructures, and national viability. It is ultimately essential for our survival as a global leader and promulgation of our values of freedoms, and representative republic ideals. Its absence is a clear and present danger to our national security if this is not addressed. The ensuing chaos and devastation of power outages in massive scale never-seen before was recently evidenced in 2004’s Northeastern U.S. cascading power outage cascading from the Ohio power corridor through Pennsylvania into the New England states, and even more recently with super storm Sandy on New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and other New England states.

4. The public comment deadline: 24 December, 2012

5. Challenges to Proposed Rules

a. Hypothetically if I was against the regulation, and it was not withdrawn before promulgation, during the promulgation process, I would challenge the regulation to a administrative court judge using one or a combination of the five recognized legal theories.

b. The five recognized legal theories that I could use to challenge in court are the following:

i. The regulation is arbitrary and capricious, and requires the agency to show basis to its assigned power. ii. The regulation does not have sufficient evidence to support it. iii. The regulation is unconstitutional as it violates some article or amendment of the U.S. Constitution or constitutional law. iv. The regulation is “Ultra Vires” or “beyond authority or powers” of the administrative agency or its trying to extend or reconfigure its authority through regulation. v. The fifth was toughest to find, but regulation can be challenged if the agency violated the Administrative Procedures Act by not properly announcing notice to the public before taking public comments.

c. If I was to challenge this regulation, I would submit that NERC does not have enough evidence to support this proposed rule, and that its timeline would exert undue economic and scarce resources on owners, operators, and suppliers of the Bulk-Power systems to implement without more studies to correlate the frequencies of the GMDs. I would contend that the Oak Ridge National Laboratories is not the correct authoritative venue to justify this regulation, but rather the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in conjunction with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA), and the U.S. Geological Agency should be the correct scientific agencies to obtain correlative geomagnetic resonance studies as well as Solar Flare CMEs and Sunspot activity historical trend data, and finally geological energy propagation and strength data studies through the planets crust should be the basis and supporting evidence for this regulation.