Department of Energy October 23, 2013 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

This notice announces a meeting of the Biological and Environmental Research Advisory Committee (BERAC). The Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of these meetings be announced in the Federal Register.

This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB), Northern New Mexico. The Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of this meeting be announced in the Federal Register.

Under section 215 of the Federal Power Act, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approves Transmission Planning (TPL) Reliability Standard TPL-001-4, submitted by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, the Commission-certified Electric Reliability Organization. Reliability Standard TPL-001-4 introduces significant revisions and improvements by requiring annual assessments addressing near-term and long-term planning horizons for steady state, short circuit and stability conditions. Reliability Standard TPL-001-4 also includes a provision that allows a transmission planner to plan for non-consequential load loss following a single contingency by providing a blend of specific quantitative and qualitative parameters for the permissible use of planned non-consequential load loss to address bulk electric system performance issues, including firm limitations on the maximum amount of load that an entity may plan to shed, safeguards to ensure against inconsistent results and arbitrary determinations that allow for the planned non-consequential load loss, and a more specifically defined, open and transparent, verifiable, and enforceable stakeholder process. The Commission finds in the Final Rule that the proposed Reliability Standard is just, reasonable, not unduly discriminatory or preferential, and in the public interest. In addition, the Commission directs NERC to modify Reliability Standard TPL-001-4 to address the concern that the standard could exclude planned maintenance outages of significant facilities from future planning assessments and directs NERC to change the TPL-001-4, Requirement R1 Violation Risk Factor from medium to high.

The recently enacted American Energy Manufacturing Technical Corrections Act amended the Energy Policy and Conservation Act as to certain consumer products and commercial and industrial equipment. The amendments include new and revised energy conservation standards and definitions, as well as technical corrections, which the Department of Energy (DOE) is incorporating into its regulations in this technical amendment. DOE is also making additional limited changes to the language of its regulations, as necessitated by the statutory amendments.