CMP parent agrees to $450K settlement over reliability violations

Courtesy / CMP The parent of Central Maine Power Co. has agreed to pay a $450,000 fine to dismiss regulatory violations CMP and two other subsidiaries made.

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By Staff

The parent corporation of Central Maine Power Co. has agreed to pay a $450,000 fine to dismiss charges CMP and other subsidiaries violated federal reliability standards for electricity transmission.

Avangrid Inc. (NYSE: AGR) admitted to a total of six “moderate risk” violations in a settlement made with the North American Electric Reliability Corp. and filed with federal regulators last week.

According to the settlement agreement, CMP violated the standards Jan. 11 when a data entry mistake interrupted the electric utility’s connection to a transmission monitoring system. Although CMP staff recognized and eventually fixed the problem, they failed to notify the operator of the New England regional power grid for over an hour.

The CMP staff also didn’t test the monitoring system as frequently as required during the incident, according to the agreement.

The cause of both violations was “lack of effective management oversight, including insufficient training.” CMP voluntarily reported the violations two weeks after the incident, and has taken steps to prevent future ones, according to the settlement.

Similar incidents occurred at Avangrid subsidiaries New York State Electric and Gas Corp. and Rochester Gas and Electric Corp. on Nov. 27. The settlement resolves all six violations of the three subsidiaries.

The North American Electric Reliability Corp. is an independent, nonprofit organization that dates to 1968 and originally created voluntary guidelines to ensure the reliability of the U.S. power grid. After the Northeast blackout of 2003, the NAERC was designated by the federal government as the reliability standard-setting authority for the grid.

CMP has more than 620,000 customers in central and southern Maine. Last month, the company was ranked last in an annual satisfaction study that evaluated 87 electric utilities nationwide based on a survey of more than 21,000 business customers.