October 2011 NEM Fall Leadership Roundtable – NEM’s Fall Leadership Roundtable will be held in Trenton, NJ on October 11-12, 2011. The Chairman of the NJBPU has confirmed his attendance and invitations to the other Commissioners, the Governor’s office and state legislators are also being extended for this event.

Early Bird registration is now available on the NEM website. Special NEM hotel rates are $99 per night at the Marriott Trenton Downtown, 1 West Lafayette Street, Trenton, NJ 08608, and (866) 373-9806. Use this hotlink for hotel reservations.

January 2012 Executive Committee Meeting - NEM’s Annual Winter Executive Committee Meeting will be held at the headquarters of SCRA in Charleston, South Carolina on January 24-25, 2012. The Winter Executive Committee Meeting is where Executive Committee members set NEM's course for the coming year. Many thanks to Bill Mahoney and SCRA for hosting the Winter Executive Committee meeting.

You may register for the meeting at this hotlink. NEM has a room block at the Hilton Garden Inn Charleston Airport, 5265 International Blvd in North Charleston, SC. You may register for the hotel at this hotlink or call the reservation number 843-308-9330 or 1-800-HILTONS and reference group code NLL.

NEM is pleased to announce that Jonathan Neil & Associates, Inc. has been elected to NEM's Executive Committee. Founded in 1981, Jonathan Neil & Associates, Inc. (JNA) has been providing Receivable Management services spanning three decades. With five offices, JNA has personnel in each time zone to service your needs. Their management team has combined experience in excess of 100 years in the areas of Credit to Cash, Dispute Resolution, and Risk Management Services. John M. Student, CEO and Ken Odett, VP Sales will represent Jonathan Neil & Associates.

NEM filed comments on the Commission Dodd-Frank rulemaking on product definitions, in particular the definition of "swap." In its comments, NEM supported the Commission‘s decision to apply the forward contract exclusion to all non-financial commodities under the Brent Interpretation subject to the following energy industry-specific clarifications to aid in the Commission‘s implementation of the rule: 1) The Commission should not set a minimum contract size for a transaction in a nonfinancial commodity in order for a transaction to qualify as a forward contract under the Brent Interpretation with respect to the future delivery and swap definitions; 2) The forward contract exclusion from the definition of swap should apply to environmental commodities such as carbon offsets/credits and renewable energy certificates; and 3) Capacity contracts should be excluded from the definition of swap. NEM also supported the Commission's proposal to exempt the regulation of RTOs/ISOs under the public interest standard set forth in Section 722 of Dodd-Frank. The full text of NEM's Comments is available on the NEM Website.

The Energy Independence and Security Act directed NIST to develop smart grid interoperability standards that would be reviewed by FERC. Upon a FERC finding of "sufficient consensus" to support the standards, FERC is then supposed to issue a proposed rulemaking. NIST filed five families of standards related to information exchange within and across smart grid domains with FERC. FERC reviewed those standards and related comments and determined that, "The Commission supports the development of a modernized, secure electric power system that can support consumer needs, enhance reliability, and facilitate advanced technology to enable demand response, wide-area situational awareness, energy storage, electric transportation, and other potentially beneficial grid services and functions.9 However, we find that there is insufficient consensus at this time to adopt, under section 1305(d) of EISA, the five families of IEC standards that NIST identified in its October 6, 2010 letter to the Commission. Commenters are nearly unanimous that we should not adopt these standards at this time, citing concerns with cyber security deficiencies and potential unintended consequences from premature adoption of individual standards. The Commission agrees with commenters’ concerns, observant that certain aspects of the current NIST process were not in place during development of the NIST Framework document and identification of the IEC standards. Accordingly, the Commission is not instituting a rulemaking proceeding pursuant to section 1305(d) of EISA."

FERC did indicate that the NIST interoperability framework process was the best means for developing smart grid interoperability standards and stated that, "we encourage utilities, smart grid product manufacturers, regulators, and other smart grid stakeholders to actively participate in the NIST interoperability framework process to work on the development of interoperability standards and to refer to that process for guidance on smart grid standards." The full text of the Order is available on the NEM Website.