Unknowns & Uncertainty

About this risk area

Beyond the list of risks we know exist, we must also be ready for the unknown risks we don’t yet know about. What is the next risk, the one we don’t know, and we are not talking about? New risks to the electric grid are always lurking and we must position ourselves as well as possible to face the uncertainty that inevitably awaits on the horizon. 

One of ReliabilityFirst’s goals is becoming more proactive at identifying emerging risks and threats to the grid. We do this by reaching out and learning from other regions, countries, and even other critical infrastructure interdependencies. We can actively learn from challenges faced by the natural gas industry, water industry, financial sector, communications, etc. We attend external workshops and webinars from industry partners (ESIG, IEEE, EPRI, etc.) to learn about risks and threats outside our current portfolio of North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) Reliability Standards and we have tools such as NERC Alerts and Reliability Guidelines to communicate risks outside of the standards. We participate on industry task forces in collaboration with the NERC Reliability and Security Technical Committee. 

ReliabilityFirst believes a diverse, equitable, and inclusive team can help us brainstorm challenges and risks from outside our current industry. Reliability experts from different backgrounds outside of the electric industry help us become aware of risks outside of the ones many of us faced while working in industry. And finally, we have enhanced our Data Analytics team and capabilities to help us find emerging risks and trends. We have implemented new dashboards to help us more quickly identify these risks.