Violation Risk Factor Definitions

Related Files

Status:
The Standards Committee directed NERC staff to solicit Regional staff to work on the VRF definition and tool proposal to bring the project to a close.  Currently, a team of NERC and Regional staff completed their second meeting on February 1, 2012.  The team has been tasked with a list of action items found in the related documents section of the VRF Definitions project page.  These will be address at their next meeting on February 15, 2012.  The next major milestone is providing a report of project status to the Compliance and Certification Committee (CCC) and Standards Committees in March 2012. 

Purpose/Industry Need:
The current Violation Risk Factor (VRF) definitions were never vetted through the NERC Standards Process, primarily due to time constraints during the Electric Reliability Organization (ERO) startup.  While the current definitions were a useful start, the lack of examples and clear divisions between risk levels led to inconsistency in their application and potential misallocation of resources.

Another primary problem is that risk is confused with importance.  There are many requirements in the standards that are important, but implementing them incorrectly or late does not necessarily lead to cascading failures.  Risk, as it applies to the Bulk Electric System (BES), includes both the impact of an event and the probability of the event occurring.

There has been a ratcheting effect in the current standards development and approval process that tends to inflate assigned risk.  While this may seem to enhance reliability, it actually draws attention and resources away from true priorities.

The primary goal of this project is to 1) a plan to develop a clearer set of VRF definitions for use in standards development, and 2) implement a tool or method consistent with goal #1 which Standards Drafting Team may use as guide in determining VRF levels of reliability standards’ requirements.