A competitive marketplace means many more participants will be executing an increasingly larger number of transactions every day, and most of these will focus on short-term costs rather than system stability. The current voluntary system of compliance with reliability standards worked reasonably well in the regulated environment in which the industry has operated, but will not provide the necessary safeguards is a competitive market. APPA urges Congress to require mandatory involvement by all industry participants in a national compliance program to ensure continued reliability. Instead, the industry consists of a series of generating plants, high-voltage transmission wires and substations with transformers that reduce the voltage to levels that consumers can use. A system with adequate operating reserves will have the strength to withstand system disturbances.
Security refers to the balanced operating state of the system in terms of stability and loadings.
Planners make protective decisions designed to limit the extent of system disturbances, and operators watch real-time conditions to ensure that an outage of a critical system component does not cause a sequential series of malfunctions. These necessary technical limits constrain the maximum capacity of the system and restrict the scope of the market available to suppliers and customers to that which is safe and reliable. The ten regions are politically organized and represent the heart of the voluntary reliability system that currently operates. The three interconnected grids are differentiated along engineering lines and distinguish the large areas in which generated electricity can flow. NERC is a non-profit, voluntary organization whose staff and activities are directed by a Board of Trustees.