A GP&L News Release:

Garland Power & Light Passes State and Federal Audits
on Operating and Reliability Standards

Garland, Texas – July 12, 2007 – Garland Power & Light is proud to report that the utility has passed two audits that affirm that GP&L is reliably operating and maintaining the electric transmission system at the standards required by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC).

 

In-depth responses and documentation addressing over 200 questions satisfied the rules in ERCOT’s Protocols and Operating Guides and NERC’s Reliability Standards. This documentation, meticulously collected by GP&L staff throughout the year, includes policies, procedures and records on transmission operations including maintenance work on transmission lines and substations, outage scheduling, tree trimming, real-time data transfers, and employee training.

 

Leading GP&L’s audit response effort was Transmission Manager David Grubbs. David is very familiar with the standards the utility must meet, since he chairs or vice chairs three Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Standards committees at ERCOT.

 

“I am pleased we have successfully proven that we are in compliance with the ERCOT and NERC requirements,” said David. “It reflects the fact that GP&L employees truly have the reliability of the system as the focus of their work. All of our efforts are to make sure the lights stay on for our customers.”

 

The audit was conducted by the Texas Reliability Entity on behalf of ERCOT and NERC and is conducted every three years. GP&L also successfully completed the 2004 audit without any violations. Between on-site audits, GP&L is required to document and self-certify compliance with the standards on a yearly basis. Deficiencies found in audits can result in fines up to $1 million for each day of violation.

 

UPDATE: While passing a reliability audit sounds like a good thing, GP&L's performance under this audit was actually outstanding. Every such audit of other utilities prior to this one has found errors and some have resulted in fines. GP&L's performance results were better than any of the audits at other utilities. The confidence of reliable service is great but smug knowledge of something else unique to Garland is priceless. I congratulate David Grubbs and all those others at GP&L that have worked so hard to reach this level of reliability!

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