Certainly. Thank you very much for asking me to appear today.
I do have a brief write-up that I've submitted, so it can be translated and distributed later.
You mentioned some of the statistics. From an electric load perspective, about 20% of the eastern interconnected load is served within the NPCC, and with respect to Canada, that represents about 70% of the Canadian load. This is based on the net energy flow within the NPCC region.
NPCC consists of five geographic areas: the six New England states—Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine—the state of New York; the provinces of Ontario and Quebec; and the maritime provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island.
In response to the U.S. energy legislation, and in preparation for the certification of North American Electric Reliability Corporation as the electric reliability organization, NPCC began restructuring in 2006. The membership interests in NPCC were transferred to a regional reliability assurance, not-for-profit corporation, now known as the Northeast Power Coordinating Council Inc.; and a separate and independent affiliated not-for-profit corporation was created, the Northeast Power Coordinating Council: Cross-Border Regional Entity Inc., or CBRE.
NPCC Inc. provides its members with regional reliability assurance services and acts as the vehicle through which states and provinces can fulfill their political mandates with respect to resource adequacy, as well as overseeing the northeastern North American electric infrastructure through development, assessment, and enforcement of regionally specific reliability criteria, the coordination of system planning, design and operations, and assessment of reliability.
The purpose of NPCC's cross-border regional entity is to enhance the reliability of the international interconnected bulk power systems in northeastern North America through the development of regional reliability standards and compliance assessment and enforcement of continent-wide and regional reliability standards pursuant to the execution and implementation of a regional delegation agreement with the ERO and Canadian provincial memoranda of understanding, backstopped through the ERO by the FERC and the Canadian provincial authorities.
On our website at www.npcc.org, you can find our business plans for 2007. They outline a comprehensive and flexible strategy for NPCC Inc. and NPCC CBRE to be able to respond to emerging reliability and organizational issues. For instance, during 2007 the electrical reliability assurance structure will continue to be refined, and we will continue to transition as FERC compliance orders and Canadian memoranda of understanding are implemented.
The reliability standards activity planned for 2007 include developing a regional reliability standards development process that conforms with the statutory requirements and takes a design basis approach to the establishment of reliability requirements; and promoting and facilitating open process review and balloting of regional reliability standards.
Entity registration and compliance enforcement activities planned for 2007 include registration of all users, owners and operators of elements of the bulk power system within northeastern North America, determined using NPCC's reliability impact-based methodology; and implementation of the NERC compliance monitoring and enforcement program within the United States, and with the compliance programs within Canada, consistent with the memoranda of understanding with the provincial regulatory and governmental authorities.
NPCC Inc. has a comprehensive set of regional reliability criteria developed and periodically revised and published on our publicly accessible website. These criteria represent over 40 years of experience and technical expertise specific to northeastern North America and, along with NPCC guidelines and procedures, state what is required to ensure the reliable operation and adequacy of the international bulk power system. The development and continual review of NPCC criteria is done by technical groups of experts in an open, inclusive, and transparent process that allows participation through a web-based comment forum.
The criteria have been developed to be consistent with the former NERC operating policies, planning standards, and subsequently, the NERC reliability standards recently filed and approved by FERC. Our criteria in some cases represent more stringent and more specific requirements, which the NPCC membership has agreed to, that are necessary to meet all northeast reliability objectives. NPCC Inc.'s membership is currently bound, through the execution of its bylaws, to adhere to these criteria. Enforcement of compliance with the criteria is achieved through the NPCC enforceable compliance program, with the support of the state and provincial authorities.
The NERC reliability standards define the reliability requirements for planning and operating the North American bulk power system. NERC's ANSI-accredited standards development process is defined in its reliability standards development procedure and is guided by reliability and market interface principles. The reliability functional model defines the functions that need to be performed to ensure that the bulk electric system operates reliably and is the foundation upon which the reliability standards are based.
NPCC has a mapping of its of more stringent regionally specific NPCC criteria that indicates where NPCC has more stringent requirements than the NERC reliability standards, or in the case of resource adequacy, for example, where we have criteria that exist with no related NERC reliability standards requirements. This mapping document will serve us as the foundation on which NPCC Inc.'s future compliance will rest. It will be a critical source of information in determining the need to revise our documents to be consistent with the standards as we move forward.
Thank you very much.