There are two stable paradigms: vertically integrated utilities (VIUs) and electricity without price controls (EWPC). Both have a Reliability First, Economic Second (R1E2), as their non-trivial essential concept. After the 70s, the R1E2 concept incrementally shifted to E1R2 and investment in transmission and reliability was reduced.

A good example of the incremental shift is now seen "As one utility respondent pointed out in our survey, just piling 160 or more required regulations on top of problems utilities already know about is a matter of 'over-kill.'”

Most of the problems the utilities have can be found in the obsolete VIUs paradigm. They won't go away until a paradigm shift is made to the EWPC paradigm.

Posted earlier under the article NERC-CIP: 'Critical' or in 'Critical Condition'?, by Warren Causey, Vice President, Sierra Energy Group.