SAN DIEGO, (March 19, 2014): EDF Renewables has announced that effective February 6, 2014, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) confirmed that EDF Renewables is listed as “Generation Operator” with the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) and responsible for the corresponding mandatory compliance with approved NERC Reliability Standards. WECC is one of eight NERC Regional Reliability Organizations responsible for coordinating and promoting the Bulk Electric System (BES) reliability in the Western Interconnection.
EDF Renewables relocated its Operations Control Center (OCC) from a Minnesota- based facility to San Diego over the course of several months and is now fully operational, managing over 6 GW of wind and solar projects across North America. The $4 million newly- constructed facility combines the OCC, SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), and Operations & Maintenance auxiliary services into a technical services hub with a “One Touch” integrated front end monitoring system to improve response times and more efficiently track key performance indicators. The facility was designed to achieve the following goals:
Create a more efficient, reliable, and secure operating platform
Centralize SCADA functions (monitoring and control)
Consolidate a multiple vendor SCADA environment and create a common operating view to decrease operator response times
Improve the ability to support growth through scalable centralized operations
Enhance efficient and effective collection of operational data
Implement state of the art physical facility and cyber security
“The OCC expansion and modernization provides a perfect opportunity to continue our strong commitment to provide best-in-class service to our valued customers while helping to improve cyber security over the nation’s BES,” commented Larry Barr, Executive Vice President for EDF Renewables. “EDF Renewables is experienced with NERC Reliability Standards compliance as we are currently registered and operating in the six NERC Regional Reliability Organizations where we operate assets. Our culture of compliance and cyber security posture continues to grow and strengthen as we migrate to common systems, integrate automation, and implement cyber and physical security best practices into our constantly evolving NERC compliance practices, audit, and monitoring solutions.”
Bob Szymanski, Director of the Operations Control Center added, “Now, more than ever,owners, operators, and users of the BES need to intelligently and securely manage their IT infrastructures, data, and critical operational processes to handle cyber-attacks to the energy industry. Our customers are increasingly demanding NERC Reliability Standards compliance documentation, which is only going to increase with the recent approval of NERC Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Version 5 Standards. CIP Version 5 will require all NERC BES registered asset owners to risk rank their cyber systems and meet reliability requirements – even the “Low Impact Rating” BES asset owners with require some level of mandatory cyber and physical security. This investment will allow us to help customers meet these new and increasingly rigorous requirements.” EDF Renewables’ comprehensive implementation plans to meet the significant changes in the NERC CIP Standards have already begun. The launch of EDF Renewables’ new OCC offers customers the ability to grow their regulatory compliance practices and improve their cyber security over BES cyber assets by leveraging advances in cyber and physical security. In accordance with the NERC’s implementation schedule EDF Renewables will soon be well-positioned to offer additional service offerings with significant reliability compliance benefits to their customers including:
Confidently evaluate the state of NERC compliance across their organization (even when outsourced)
Confidently rely on compliant NERC CIP best practices
Effectively maintain their mandatory regulatory compliance documentation
Quickly respond to NERC audit data requests