Electricity Transmission

"We have one North American grid, and it is essential that all participants in bulk power operations know and adhere to the rules," said U.S. Energy Secretary Bodman. "The affected government agencies have a special burden to speak in a coordinated way on reliability matters to the industry and its reliability organizations. The Bilateral Group will help us do that." "Maintaining high reliability standards across the international grid is critical to keeping the lights on," said Minister Duncan. "This commitment to cooperation will benefit all of us." U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Pat Wood said, "Amid the growing energy interdependency between the United States and Canada, the August 2003 blackout painfully reminded us that blackouts do not respect national boundaries. This agreement to consult on an international reliability framework is consistent with many of the recommendations of the U.S. - Canada Power System Outage Task Force report and the goals of the pending U.S. energy bill." - developing principles to guide the establishment of a reliability organization that can function on an international basis; - coordinating the electric reliability standards process; and - consulting on policy and regulatory issues surrounding reliability. http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/June2005/30/c7703.html

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