Justification for No Material or Non-Substantive Change, implemented in Final Rule in Docket RM15-25

FERC-725 (OMB Control No. 1902-0255)

Final Rule in Docket No. RM15-25, issued 6/16/2016

RIN: 1902-AF11

Non-Substantive Changes, Made by the Final Rule (Order 824) in Docket No. RM15-25-000 (Availability of Certain North American Electricity Reliability Corporation Databases to the Commission)

In a Final Rule issued on June 16, 2016,¹ the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Commission) amended its regulations to require the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) to provide the Commission, and Commission staff, with access, on a non-public and ongoing basis, to three existing databases compiled and maintained by NERC. The amended regulation applies to the following NERC databases, and to any successor databases: (1) the Transmission Availability Data System (TADS), (2) the Generating Availability Data System (GADS), and (3) the protection system misoperations database. Access to these databases will be limited to data regarding U.S. facilities provided to NERC on a mandatory basis.

In the Final Rule, FERC determined that access to these three NERC databases was necessary to carry out the Commission’s obligations under section 215 of the Federal Power Act (FPA).² Specifically, the Commission found that access to the TADS, GADS and protection system misoperations databases regarding U.S. facilities was necessary to carry out the Commission’s statutory authority: (1) to evaluate the need to direct new or modified Reliability Standards under section 215(d) of the FPA; and (2) to better understand NERC’s periodic assessments and reports regarding the reliability and adequacy of the Bulk-Power System under section 215(g) of the FPA.³

The new regulation does not require NERC to collect new information, compile information into any kind of report, or reformulate its raw data. In addition, the new regulation will not require any user, owner, or operator to provide any new or additional information to NERC to populate the databases.

As such, the information collection is already covered by the FERC-725 information collection (Certification of Electric Reliability Organization; Procedures for Electric Reliability Standards). That information collection covers the burden, reporting and record-keeping requirements associated with reliability assessments, reliability standards development, and other reporting, among other things. The Commission is not changing the way the collection is being done, and is not modifying the burden, cost or respondents beyond a de minimis amount. Accordingly, the Commission considers this as a non-material or non-substantive change to a currently approved collection.

1 Availability of Certain North American Electric Reliability Corporation Databases, posted in the Commission’s eLibrary at http://elibrary-backup.ferc.gov/idmws/common/opennat.asp?fileID=14277955 .

2 16 U.S.C. §824o.

3 Id. § 824o(g).