On June 9th, FERC and NERC issued a Joint Study Report on Planning Restoration Absent SCADA or EMS (PRASE). A copy of the 44 page report can be found here:
As the title suggests, this report assesses and makes practical recommendations regarding practices, procedures and methodologies aimed to expedite system restoration during a loss of SCADA or EMS functionality. This includes approaches to system monitoring without SCADA or EMS tools, planning to support system restoration under such conditions, and incorporating these measures and approaches into system restoration training. Five key recommendations are provided in the Joint Report (and summarized by me below):
1. Entities should have backup communications measures and train on them to ensure that entities are capable, available, and reliable for the increased use expected during system restoration without SCADA functionality.
2. Entities should review, refine and train their personnel resources needed to support the field and control room personnel necessary for system restoration absent SCADA, with an emphasis on deploying personnel to acquire data and logistical support such as food, shelter, and transportation for such personnel.
3. Entities should review and refine backup power supply plans to ensure they extend beyond the normal backup battery timeframes.
4. Entities should maintain analysis tools for throughout the system restoration effort and train on the use of the tools.
5. Entities should expressly train on system restoration while incorporating more stressful situations involving loss of SCADA or EMS scenarios or loss of other data sources.
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