Journal of Critical Infrastructure Policy
remain ( s ) operational in an otherwise blacked out area or within the partial failure of an integrated electrical system
• Uncontrolled loss of 300 Megawatts or more of firm system loads for more than 15 minutes or more from a single incident
• Firm load shedding of 100 Megawatts or more implemented under emergency operational policy
• System-wide voltage reductions of 3 percent or more
• Public appeal to reduce the use of electricity for purposes of maintaining the continuity of the Bulk Electric System
OE-417 instructions describe the voluntary and mandatory requirements for incident reporting , including identifying the entities that must submit information .
• The Balancing Authorities ( BA ), Reliability Coordinators ( RC ), some Generating Entities , and Electric Utilities , including those located in Puerto Rico , the Virgin Islands , Guam , and other U . S . possessions are responsible for completing all relevant portions of the form when any of the criteria are met requiring the filing of Form OE-417
• All electric utilities must provide information to a Balancing Authority ( BA ) when necessary for their reporting obligations , and file Form OE-417 in cases where a BA will not be involved
• Foreign utilities handling U . S . balancing authority responsibilities may wish to file this information voluntarily to the DOE . Any U . S . -based utility in this international situation must inform DOE that these filings will come from a foreign-based electric system ( DOE 2020 , 1 ).
Data Analysis
Our research presents data for 2,825 reported power outage cases over a 246-month period from January 2000 through June 2020 . We used a consistent methodology to both standardize and normalize common terms reported , and the types of outages by classification : year , month , date , geographic region , outage duration , customers affected , and electricity demand loss .
Geographic electric council regions are categorized by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation ( NERC ) and its divisions as recorded by the U . S . Census Bureau . The territorial oversight of NERC regions and councils were adjusted in 2000 and 2005 . The new NERC reliability assessment areas are a mixture of NERC reliability entities , entity sub-regions , regional transmission organizations and system operators . Figure 1 shows regions for NERC long-term reliability assessment areas since 2010 . Figure 2 illustrates the NERC regions from 2005-2010 ( Map 2 ).
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