Is there any other universe in which people talk about non-zero-dollar penalties?
A zero-dollar penalty requires enough thought process, thank you. It just seems like too much work to parse a sentence about a non-zero-dollar anything. Power system reliability is already hard enough.
The reliability regime is a dauntingly, maybe numbingly, technical topic. The myriad set of requirements that different kinds of industry participants have to follow appears endless, and since the reliability regime became mandatory it has grown seemingly like Topsy. It certainly has become more visible to non-participants, thanks to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission oversight (though it remains pretty black-boxy.)
FERC's issuance Friday of an order on an "omnibus notice of penalty" from the North American Electric Reliability Corp. approved NERC's determination of 564 proposed penalties for non-compliance with reliability standards. Of the total, 541 included assessment of zero-dollar penalties. That is, non-monetary penalties.
The other penalties included monetary assessments, from $1,000 to $15,000 -- dubbed non-zero-dollar penalties.
Did we say double negative? Actually, it verges on a triple, but we can't think about it long enough to be sure.
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