Human Performance

Human Performance is primarily concerned with the challenges related to hiring and retaining a skilled workforce to ensure reliability and security objectives are met. Across the RF footprint, workforce shortages, retirements, inadequate training, and limited availability of specialized technical personnel are emerging concerns affecting multiple risk categories. These workforce gaps are especially significant in technically specialized roles in transmission planning, system operations, protection engineering, cyber security, and equipment manufacturing, where the loss of experienced personnel can increase the likelihood of human error and lead to process and operational failures.

NERC TADS data indicates that human performance-related outages were the second-largest cause of transmission outages in 2020-2025, although these outages have exhibited a downward trend. NERC GADS data indicates that human performance-related outages were a relatively small share of total generation outages since 2020. Figure 20 shows that operator error was the leading human performance-related outage cause between 2020 and 2025, and the number of these outages trended downward over time.

Similarly, while 39% of all misoperations in the RF footprint from 2020 to 2024 were connected to human performance issues, the number of human performance-related misoperations declined by almost 70% over the last four years, indicating substantial improvement.

Workforce constraints in the cyber security sector remain a significant concern, with RF’s 2024 CIP Themes and Lessons Learned Report identifying workforce and succession planning as a top theme. According to the report, cyber security staffing gaps increased 12.6% year over year. In relation to supply chains, according to CADDi’s 2025 Manufacturing Outlook Study, 79% of manufacturers identified skilled labor shortages as their biggest external challenge, reinforcing the relationship between workforce availability, manufacturing capacity, and prolonged equipment lead times.

Effective mitigation of this risk requires continued emphasis on structured onboarding, mentoring, role-specific training, succession planning, knowledge transfer, and cross-department flexibility. RF uses technical committees, outreach forums, Tech Talks, and collaboration with industry groups to share lessons learned and best practices around workforce development. Based on feedback from the Reliability Committee, RF is launching a Planning Workshop with beginner and advanced level training topics for transmission planning engineers. RF has also worked with the Transmission Performance Subcommittee to coordinate training for power-flow software and Python.

Energy Policy

Policy at the federal, state, and local level may directly or indirectly impact the reliability of the Bulk Power System. Policy includes FERC Orders and NERC Reliability Standards that govern the reliability and security of the BPS.

In the context of grid transformation, state and federal policy continue to reshape the resource mix. As PJM and MISO both project significant growth in summer and winter peak demand over the next decade, resource additions must consider state-level clean energy mandates. At the same time, recently enacted federal legislation and executive actions are deferring conventional generation retirements.

Enhancements to NERC Reliability Standards are helping to mitigate reliability risks. For example, NERC standards revisions (e.g., EOP-012-3, EOP-011-4, TPL-008-1, and TOP-002-5) directly address cold weather preparedness and operations, a material issue given Winter Storm Elliott’s 90.5 GW of coincident unplanned outages. In the cyber security arena, NERC Reliability Standard revisions and FERC Order No. 912 are helping to mitigate risks associated with third-party access, cloud and shared cyber infrastructure, and supply chain vulnerabilities.

Other policies shaping the energy landscape include those addressing inverter-based resources and large loads. For example, FERC Order No. 901 has initiated changes to the NERC Reliability Standards regarding modeling, ride-through capability, and interconnection studies associated with inverter-based resources. Regarding the risk posed by large loads, FERC has issued orders for the electric industry to develop efficient transmission service application and study procedures, as well as prevent cost-shifting.

RF continuously reviews federal and state regulatory policies and engages with policymakers and industry stakeholders to serve as an independent technical resource on BPS reliability. RF’s outreach and support efforts are committed to the advancement of timely, efficient, and sustainable solutions to enhance grid reliability and security.

Resilience

Resilience pertains to the ability to anticipate, adapt to, minimize the impact of, and/or rapidly recover from a potentially disruptive event.

Transmission outage metrics generally indicate strong resilience in the RF footprint, with outage frequency and severity trending downward. However, RF has recently observed an increase in outage duration for transmission lines and transformers, with most outages caused by equipment failures. Historically, transmission outages associated with equipment failures at substations are longer in duration than other causes, mainly due to the time necessary to obtain the proper safety clearances to perform repairs. Additionally, generation resource vulnerability exists within the RF footprint for natural gas resources that historically exhibit greater scarcity issues in winter.

RF is continually enhancing its Threat Intelligence program to strengthen overall situational awareness and resilience across the RF footprint. Implementing new tools and communication methods has enabled RF to monitor and assess individual events and communicate notable trends and observations to internal and external stakeholders. This helps to bolster situational awareness of emerging or imminent cyber, physical, and operational threats among various stakeholder groups. During Winter Storm Fern, this process was used to gather emergent weather and news information, collaborate with industry stakeholders, and provide updates to RF’s broader audience.

Data

Data availability and quality, as well as the maturity of metrics and analytics that are used to assess grid performance are all vital to the successful operation and regulation of the BPS.

Since data is integral to achieving desired operational outcomes and planning for anticipated changes in response to grid transformation, RF uses a broad and evolving set of data sources to strengthen its understanding of reliability and security risks across the BPS. These sources include RF violation intake, generation and transmission outage data (GADS and TADS), renewable generation performance data, weather and operational information, misoperation event data (MIDAS), and external indicators related to cyber security threats. As grid threats evolve, integrating data from distributed energy resources, inverter-based resources, PMUs (phasor measurement units), and computational loads will remain vital to maintaining effective situational awareness.

Data availability and quality have direct implications on how risks are identified, measured, and mitigated. RF collaborates with the ERO Enterprise and industry stakeholders on data collection efforts, data processing initiatives, and other data-related activities that are intended to enhance transparency, improve decision-making, and promote reliability.