Standardization for enterprise power security and continuity
The mission of the ANSI Homeland Security Standards Panel (HSSP) is to identify existing consensus standards, or if none exist, to assist the Department of Homeland Security and those sectors requesting assistance to accelerate development and adoption of consensus standards critical to homeland security. As part of this role the panel has been investigating the area of enterprise power security and best practises in ensuring continuity of supply. A workshop was established with the aim of “identifying existing standards, standards under development, and gap areas in standardization for enterprise power security and continuity.” Findings and recommendations • There is the need for a practical standard or recommended practice on how an organization should assess, plan, prioritize, etc. for overall power security and continuity. This would be aimed at both the private enterprise and entities at the municipal level. • Better private sector engagement with the public sector is needed for power security, backup, etc., both from a motivational and ‘how to’ perspective. • The appropriate authority with jurisdiction measures compliance with applicable codes for safety, but there is a gap for measuring performance. The workshop noted however that the National Electrical Code (NEC) is currently in a revision cycle. The proposal phase has yielded a new article on Critical Operations Power Systems. This article will address unique requirements for mission critical facilities. NFPA 110 will address the performance requirements for emergency systems. • The group agreed that conformity assessment in the area of power security and continuity was a good idea, but a standard is needed against which to certify. In addition to needing a standard, one must determine who accredits the certifiers and what the incentives for becoming certified are (e.g., insurance discounts, better credit rating, etc.). Property management companies responsible for financial-sector buildings were cited as one source that would potentially be interested in the certification process. The workshop also noted that the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System should be looked at as a model for those pursuing this area further. The workshop makes the following recommendations: 1. An appropriate Standards Developing Organization (SDO) should initiate development of a voluntary consensus standard to quantify power security and continuity performance. The standard would provide measurable performance elements for power security and continuity that could then be used to certify compliance with the voluntary standard. 2. A conformity assessment program, involving accreditation and certification, should be launched to measure compliance upon publication of the standard in the first recommendation. Incentives for organizations to become certified should also be examined prior to the implementation of this program. 3. Further exploration should be conducted on the subject of private sector engagement with the public sector for power security and continuity, both from a motivational and “how to” perspective. 4. Instrumentation and control systems, and the role for standards, should be studied further as they are important to power security and continuity 5. The field of cyber security should focus more attention on the issue of power security, and vice versa, as there is a critical interdependency between cyber and power security at the grid and enterprise level. Read the workshop report (PDF)
•Date: 8th June 2006• Region: US • Type: Article •Topic: Power management |
