Glossary of Terms

Ancillary Services

Ancillary services are those services necessary to support the transmission of energy from resources to loads while maintaining, reliable operation of the Transmission Provider's transmission system in accordance with Good Utility Practice.

Annual Transmission Costs

The total annual cost of the Transmission System shall be the amount specified in Schedule 1 until amended by the Transmission Provider or modified by the Commission.

Commission

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Control Area

An electric power system or combination of electric power systems to which a common automatic control scheme is applied in order to: (1) match, at all times, the power output of the generators within the electric power system(s) and capacity and energy purchased from entities outside the electric power system(s), with the load in the electric power system(s); (2) maintain, within the limits of Good Utility Practice, scheduled interchange with other Control Areas; (3) maintain the frequency of the electric power system(s) within reasonable limits in accordance with Good Utility Practice; and (4) provide sufficient generating capacity to maintain operating reserves in accordance with Good Utility Practice.

Delivering Party

The entity supplying the capacity and/or energy to be transmitted at Point(s) of Receipt.

Designated Agent

Any entity that performs actions or functions on behalf of the Transmission Provider, an eligible Customer or the Transmission Customer required under the Tariff.

Firm Transmission Service

Point-to-point transmission service under this tariff that is reserved and/or scheduled for a term of one year or more and that is of the same priority as that of the Transmission Provider's firm use of the transmission system. Firm Transmission service under this Tariff that is reserved and/or scheduled for a term of less than one year shall be considered Short-Term Firm Transmission Service for the purposes of service liability.

Good Utility Practice

Any of the practices, methods and acts engaged in or approved by a significant portion of the electric utility industry during the relevant time period, or any of the practices, methods and acts which, in the exercise of reasonable judgment in light of the facts known at the time the decision was made, could have been expected to accomplish the desired result of the lowest reasonable cost consistent with good business practices, reliability, safety and expedition. Good Utility Practice is not intended to be limited to the optimum practice, method or act to the exclusion of all others, but rather to be acceptable practices, methods, or acts generally accepted in the region and consistently adhered to by the Transmission Provider.

Hourly Non-Firm Transmission Service

Point-to-point transmission under this tariff that is scheduled and paid for on an as available basis and is subject to interruption.

Load Ratio Share

Ratio of a Transmission Customer's Network Load to the Transmission Provider's total load computed in accordance with Sections 11.2 and 11.3 and calculated on a rolling twelve month basis.

Member System

An Eligible Customer operating as a part of a lawful combination, partnership, association or joint action agency composed exclusively of Eligible Customers.

Native Load Customers

The wholesale and retail customers on whose behalf the Transmission Provider, by statute, franchise, regulatory requirements, or contract, has undertaken an obligation to construct and operate the Transmission Provider's system to meet the reliable electric needs of such customers.

Network Customers

Entities receiving transmission service pursuant to the terms of the Transmission Provider's Network Integration Tariff.

Network Integration Transmission Service

Network Integration Transmission Service allows a Transmission Customer to integrate, plan, economically dispatch and regulate its Network Resources to serve its Network Load in a manner comparable to that in which the Transmission Provider utilizes its Transmission System to serve its Native Load customers. Network Integration transmission Service also may be used by the Transmission Customer to deliver non-firm energy purchases to its Network Load without additional charge.

Network Load

The designated load of a Transmission Customer, including the entire load of all Member Systems designated pursuant to Section 6.0. A Transmission Customer's Network Load shall not be reduced to reflect any portion of such load served by the output of any generating facilities owned, or generation purchased, by the Transmission Customer or its Member Systems.

Non-Firm Transmission Service

Point-to-point transmission service under this Tariff that is reserved and/or scheduled on an as available basis and is subject to interruption. Non-firm Transmission service is available on a stand alone basis as either Hourly Non-firm Transmission Service or Short-Term Non-firm Transmission service. Non-firm transmission Service is also available in conjunction with reservations of Firm Transmission Service for any term subject to the conditions set forth in Section 14.1 under this Tariff.

Parties

The Transmission Provider and the Transmission Customer receiving service under this Tariff.

Point(s) of Delivery

Point(s) of interconnection on the Transmission Provider's Transmission System where capacity and/or energy transmitted by theTransmission Provider will be made available to the Receiving Party. The Point(s) of Delivery shall be specified in the Service Agreement.

Point-to-Point Transmission Service Tariff

The Transmission Provider's Point-to-Point Transmission Service Tariff as such tariff may be amended and/or superseded from time to time.

Point(s) of Receipt

Point(s) of interconnection on the Transmission Provider's Transmission System where capacity and/or energy will be made available to the Transmission Provider by the Delivering Party. The Point(s) of Delivery shall be specified in the Service Agreement.

Point-to-Point Transmission Service

The reservation and/or transmission of energy on either a firm basis and/or a non-firm basis from Point(s) of Receipt to Point(s) of Delivery under this Tariff, including any Ancillary Services that are provided by the Transmission Provider in conjunction with such service.

Receiving Party

The entity receiving the capacity and/or energy transmitted by the Transmission Provider to the Point(s) of Delivery.

Regional Transmission Group

A voluntary organization of transmission owners, transmission users and other entities approved by the Commission to efficiently coordinate transmission planning (and expansion), operation and use on a regional (and interregional) basis.

Service Agreement

The initial agreement and any supplements thereto entered into by the Transmission Customer and the Transmission Provider for service under this Tariff.

Service Commencement Date

The date the transmission Provider begins to provide service pursuant to the terms of an executed Service Agreement, or the date the Transmission Provider begins to provide service in accordance with the provisions of section 4.3 of this Tariff.

Short-Term Firm Transmission Service

Firm point-to-point transmission service under this Tariff that is reserved and/or scheduled for a term of less than one year and that is of the same priority as that of the Transmission Provider's firm use of the transmission system.

Short-Term Non-Firm Transmission Service

Non-firm point-to-point transmission service under this Tariff that is reserved and/or scheduled on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis for a renewable term of not more than thirty (30) days each and is subject to interruption.

Transmission Customer

Any Eligible Customer (or its designated agent) that executes a service agreement and/or receives transmission service under this Tariff.

Transmission Provider (TP)

The public utility (or its designated agent) that owns or controls facilities used for the transmission of electric energy in interstate commerce and provides service under this Tariff.

Transmission Service

Point-to-point transmission service provided under this Tariff. Transmission service will be provided on a firm and/or non-firm basis.

Transmission System

The facilities owned, controlled, operated or supported by the Transmission Provider that are used to provide transmission service under this Tariff.

Valid Request

A completed Application that satisfies on an ongoing basis all the requirements of this Tariff.

Long-Term Historical Data Storage

Providers shall archive TS information and transactions for a minimum of 3 years. Customer requests for data from archives, either in printed report form or in electronic form, shall be handled in a reasonable amount of time consistent with the size and volume of such requests and the resources available.

Secondary Transmission Provider (STP)

Any Customer who has acquired rights to use transmission facilities and chooses to resell transmission services derived from those rights. The Secondary Provider must use the TSIN Node designated by the Transmission Provider and comply with TSIN requirements for secondary market information.

Short-Term Historical Data Storage

Providers shall store historical TS information and transactions on-line for direct access by Customers for a minimum of 60 days.

Transmission Services Information (TS Information)

Transmission and ancillary services information which must be made available by public utilities on a non-discriminatory basis to meet the regulatory requirements of transmission open access.

Transmission Services Information Network (TSIN)

Computer system (s) and associated communication facilities that public utilities are required to provide for the purpose of making available to all transmission users comparable interactions with TS information.

Transmission Services Information Network Node (TSIN Node)

A subsystem of a TSIN. It is the smallest element of a TSIN that provides access to TS Information by a transmission user.

Transmission Services Information Provider (TSIP)

An entity which provides for the operation of one or more TSIN nodes. Transmission Providers may delegate their responsibility to operate a TSIN to an entity capable of meeting TSIN requirements.

Value-Added Transmission Services Information Provider (VTSIP)

An entity who uses TSIN information in the same manner as a Customer and provides value-added information services to other Customers.

Asynchronous (Operation)

A mode of operation where an end system can ask several operations to be performed subsequently without necessarily waiting for an answer between two operations.

Asynchronous (Transmission)

Transmissions that are not related to timing of the transmission facility; transmission is characterized by individual characters, which are surrounded by start and stop bits. from which a receiver derives its timing.

Asynchronous Terminal

A terminal device that transmits data to a host device a character at a time.

Bandwidth

The difference, expressed in Hertz (Hz), between the highest and lowest frequencies of a transmission channel.

Bilateral Agreement

Written statement signed by a pair of communicating parties that specifies what data may be exchanged between them.

Bridge

Device used to connect local area networks at the data link layer.

Broadcast

Simultaneous transmission of data to all destinations on a network.

Client-Server Architecture

An application architecture where one end system (the client) requests another end system (the server) to perform operations and to giveback results.

Common Data Exchange Structure

Transfer syntax used to ensure that two end systems communicate using the same data representation.

Conformance Test

Test used to ensure a product complies with a standard.

Connection-Oriented

A mode of communication where the data exchange is done in a 3-phase process: establishment of a connection, transfer of the data, release of the connection.

Connectionless

A mode of communication where no connection is established prior to the data transfer; the data transfer itself is a self contained unit carrying all information, such as addresses, etc.

Consistency

Property stating that parts of an action are performed accurately, correctly and with validity.

Control Object

In VT, allows features of a terminal, such as audible warning or display of a message, to be activated by the reception of data.

Data Confidentiality

Security service that provides for the protection of data from unauthorized disclosure.

Data Integrity

Security service used to determine if data has been altered or destroyed in transit.

Data Transparency

Data transmission in which the recognition of control characters is suppressed to prevent user data from being interpreted as control information.

Device Object

An abstract object defined in the VT standard that maps a display object onto the real output device (e.g., terminal or local printer) and vice versa.

Directory

Collection of open systems which cooperate to hold a logical data base of information about a set of objects in the real world (e.g., OSI users and network resources. The directory also provides services for users (people and application processes) to access the information contained in the repository.

Directory Access Protocol

The protocol used between a directory user agent and a directory system agent.

Directory Information Base

The complete set of information held by the directory.

Directory System Agent

An application entity that provides the directory service.

Directory System Protocol

The protocol used between two directory system agents.

Directory User Agent

An application entity that makes the directory service available to a user.

Display Object

An abstract object defined in the VT standard to model the data to be exchanged in a virtual terminal association.

Encryption

The transformation of data into an encoded form.

Frame Relay

Frame relay is a packet based interface standard that has been optimized for the transport of protocol-oriented data.

Gateway

A network station used to connect incompatible networks, systems or devices; performs a conversion between the different protocols.

Management Information Base

The set of managed objects in a system, together with their attributes, constitutes that system's management information base. It is a conceptual repository of management information at each system.

Management Information Library

A document containing the specification of all defined managed objects and a complete description of their behavior. Development of this library is currently being proposed by groups such as the NIST OSI Implementors' Workshop Group.

Modem

Modulator/demodulator; electronic device that enables digital data to be sent over analog transmission facilities.

Multicast

Simultaneous transmission of data to a defined group of destinations on a network.

Node

System which processes information in a network.

Non-Confirmed Service

A service which, following initiation, will not receive a response from the service provider.

Non-Repudiation

Security service that prevents an entity involved in a data exchange from denying that it participated in the exchange.

Object Class

Collection of directory entries of the same type.

Polling

Communications access control procedure where a primary (master) station systematically invites secondary stations, one at a time, to transmit data.

Profile

Depending on context, refers to either a functional profile for an ISO standard such as FTAM or a collection of ISO standards such as those defined in the U.S. GOSIP or MAP/TOP specifications.

Public Data Network

Network operated by common carriers or telecommunications administrations for the provision of packet switched circuits to the public.

Quality of Service

A parameter specifying the level of performance needed for communications, such as transit delay, priority, accuracy, or reliability.

Report-by-Exception

Mode of operation in which an end system (e.g., RTU) only reports information that has changed since data was last transmitted.

Response Time

Time between the request and the response for a network transaction.

Short Stack

A communication architecture that uses a subset of the seven OSI layers, typically the physical, data link and application layers.

Store and Forward

Describes network operations where messages, packets, or frames are temporarily stored in one or more intermediate nodes before reaching their final destination.

Subnetwork Address

The information needed to identify a particular real system attached to a subnetwork (e.g., token ring adapter address).

Subnetwork

Collection of equipment and physical media which can be used to interconnect other real systems for the purpose of communications. Subnetworks are bounded by intermediate systems operating at the network layer or above.

Support Level

Level of functionality supported by the protocol.

Synchronous (Operation)

A mode of operation where an end system must wait for the answer to an operation before asking for another one to be performed.

Synchronous (Transmission)

Data transmissions in which the time of occurrence of each signal representing a bit is related to a fixed timing reference. No start and stop bits are appended to each character.

Synchronous Terminal

Terminal device that transfers data to the host processor as a block of data rather than a character at a time.

Syntax

Grammar or structure rules which must be adhered to by a language (e.g., transfer syntax).

T1

Transmission rate of 1.544 Mbps on T1 communication lines. Also referred to as digital signal level I (DS- I).

Timestamping

Message contains a field that tells the age of the information that it carries.

Topology

The physical and logical relationship of nodes on a network (e.g., star, ring, bus etc.).

Virtual Circuit

In X.25 terminology, a logical network connection between two communicating end points provided via some intervening network.

ANSI		American National Standards Institute
ASCII		American National Standard Code for Information Interchange
ATM		Asynchronous Transfer Mode
BMP		Bit Map Protocol
CASE		Computer-Aided Software Engineering
CCITT		International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee
CGI		Common Gateway Interface
CLNS		Connectionless Network Service
CLTP		Connectionless Transport Protocol
CNHP		Common Management Information Protocol
CMISE		Common Management Information Service Element
DAISTM		Data Access Integration Services
IDCE		Distributed Computing Environment
DNS 		Distributed Name Service
DXF		Drawing Exchange Format
EDI		Electronic Data Interchange
EMS		Energy Management System
EPRI		Electric Power Research Institute
FDDI		Fiber Distributed Data Interface
FTAM		File Transfer, Access and Management
FTP		File Transport Protocol
GIF		Graphics Interface Format
HDLC		High-level Data Link Control
HTML		Hypertext Markup Language
HTTP		Hypertext Transport Protocol
ICCP		Inter-Control Center Communications Protocol
IDEC		Inter-Utility Data Exchange Committee
IEC		International Electrotechnical Commission
IEC TC57	International Electrotechnical Commission Technical Committee 57
IEEE		Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
InternetNIC	Internet Network Information Center
IP		Internet Protocol Address
IFCP		Internet Protocol Control Protocol
IRC		Interactive Relay Chat
ISDN		Integrated Services Digital Network
ISO		International Organization for Standardization
ITU		International Telecommunication Union
JPEG		Joint Photographic Experts Group
LAN		Local Area Network
NERC		North American Electric Reliability Council 
NTP		Network Time Protocol
OSF		Open Systems Foundation
OSI		Open Systems Interconnection
PCX		Picture Image
PDN		Public Data Network
PPP		Point-to-Point Protocol	
RDA		Remote Data Access
S-HTTP		Secure HTTP
SIDF		System Independent Data Format
SLIP		Serial Line Internet Protocol
SNMP		Simple Network Management Protocol
SQL		Sequential Query Language
SSL		Secure Sockets Layer
TCP/IP		Transport Control Protocol and Internet Protocol
UCAtm		Utility Communications Architecture
URL		Universal Resource Locator
WSCC		Western Systems Coordinating Council