the secretary of energy. This team investigated eight major outages that occurred in the summer of 1999. an underlying concern was that the emerging market structure was the root cause of the outages. The team presented its final report and recommendations to the secretary in March of 2000. In addition, in 1999 Pserc participated as a member of cerTs in writing six white papers to be used by the DOe as a foundation for a comprehensive multiyear DOe r&D plan. These papers covered the following topics: ✔✔ the federal role in reliability r&D in the emerging restructured industry ✔✔ recent reliability events ✔✔ organization of bulk power markets ✔✔ treatment of risk and uncertainty ✔✔ integration of distributed energy resources ✔ ✔ real-time security monitoring and control. march/april 2017 By 2002 cerTs-and, hence, Pserc-were engaged in a Us$7 million program of reliability research supported by the DOe's Transmission reliability Program and the california energy commission's Public Interest energy research Program. Those activities were organized under four major areas: ✔✔ reliability technology issues and needs assessment ✔✔ real-time system monitoring and control ✔✔ integration of distributed energy resources ✔✔ reliability and markets. One of the critical issues facing the grid is the reliable and economic integration of renewable energy technologies. In its multiyear, DOe-funded Future Grid Initiative, Pserc studied a range of operational, planning, and market issues associated with a high table 2. Examples of PSERC engagement in national power system issues. Year Issue Late 1990s- early 2000s Experimentation to test power system market mechanisms 1999-2000 Power Outage Study Team report 2003-2004 Northeast power blackout of 2003: public education, investigation, and reporting 2011-2016 Future Grid Initiative: Future grid to enable sustainable energy systems 2015 PSERC/NSF Executive Forum on Cyber and Physical Infrastructure for the Future Grid ieee power & energy magazine 85