BPA reaches compliance milestone with industry reliability audit

For the first time in BPA’s history, the agency completed an industry reliability standards audit with zero findings of non-compliance. 

The Western Electricity Coordinating Council, which oversees compliance for the reliability standards of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, administered the audit earlier this year. Preparations for the 2023 WECC audit began in early March and culminated in on-site engagement with a WECC audit team during the last three weeks of August.

The review of reliability standards for the electric grid focused on operations, planning, cybersecurity and physical security. In all of these areas, BPA was found to be in compliance with NERC standards. 

“This outcome of no non-compliance findings is huge,” said Tom McDonald, executive vice president of Compliance, Audit and Risk Management. “This means that BPA’s internal processes and structures to ensure reliability across our enterprise are working. Now, that doesn’t mean that BPA never faces a compliance challenge, but what it does mean is that we are actively identifying those challenges and resolving them before they become a significant impact on BPA’s ability to deliver on its mission.”

A cross agency team of more than 100 personnel, encompassing organizations from Transmission Services (TT, TO, TE and TF), Security and Continuity of Operations and Compliance and Governance, helped WECC organize visits to a control center and four substations. The BPA team also provided several in-person interviews. At the closeout of the audit, WECC cited the effort of the team to produce clear evidence in support of compliance measures.

In addition to its historic compliance outcome, BPA reduced Requests for Information to 14, down from an average of 36 RFIs in previous audits. RFIs typically identify areas in advance of an actual audit where WECC notes a possible, but unconfirmed, compliance issue that results in a deeper dive by WECC and BPA to determine whether there are items that need to be resolved.

BPA has been routinely audited by WECC since 2008 and audited annually since 2019. Based on the success of this audit and BPA’s ability to reduce its risk footprint, WECC is changing the audit frequency to every other year moving forward.

“This year’s result was built on many years of hard work by BPA’s reliability compliance community to implement controls, improve processes and increase visibility of the measures used to ensure reliability,” said Christoper Frost, BPA’s chief compliance officer. “We are reaping the benefits of previous audits and work across BPA to ensure we can deliver on our mission safely and reliably.”