The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on June 27 issued an order accepting the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s proposed modifications to reliability standard EOP-012-2 that addresses extreme cold weather preparedness and operations.
FERC’s order, which was issued at its monthly open meeting, responds to a Feb. 16, 2024 petition submitted by NERC seeking approval of proposed reliability standard EOP-012-2 (Docket Nos. RD24-5, RD24-1).
“It is essential to the reliable operation of the Bulk-Power System to ‘ensure enough generating units will be available during the next cold weather event,’” FERC said in its order.
“When extreme cold weather events such as Winter Storms Uri or Elliott occur, the Bulk-Power System cannot operate reliably without adequate generation,” it said.
The proposed reliability standard EOP-012-2 “improves upon the approved, but not yet effective, Reliability Standard EOP-012-1 by clarifying the requirements for generator cold weather preparedness and by making other improvements consistent with the Commission’s directives in its February 2023 order to help ensure that more generation is available during extreme cold weather,” FERC said.
“Accordingly, we find that proposed Reliability Standard EOP-012-2 is just, reasonable, not unduly discriminatory or preferential, and in the public interest,” FERC said.
At the same time, FERC found that the proposed Reliability Standard EOP-012-2 “requires improvement to address certain concerns.”
Among other things, FERC directed NERC to develop and submit modifications to proposed Reliability Standard EOP-012-2 “to address concerns related to the ambiguity of the newly defined term Generator Cold Weather Constraint to ensure that the Generator Cold Weather Constraint declaration criteria included within the proposed standard are objective and sufficiently detailed so that applicable entities understand what is required of them and to remove all references to ‘reasonable cost,’ ‘unreasonable cost,’ ‘cost,’ and ‘good business practices’ and replace them with objective, unambiguous, and auditable terms.”
NERC must also develop and submit modifications to the proposed reliability standard for NERC to “receive, review, evaluate, and confirm the validity of each Generator Cold Weather Constraint invoked by a generator owner, in a timely fashion, to ensure that such declaration cannot be used to avoid mandatory compliance with the proposed Reliability Standard or obligations in a corrective action plan.”
The Commission “has repeatedly expressed an urgency in completing cold weather Reliability Standards and having them implemented in a timely manner to address the risks presented by cold weather events on the reliability of the Bulk-Power System,” it noted.
“Further, we note that NERC submitted the current filing in response to Commission directives to improve the cold weather reliability standards, and the five core directives to NERC in this order are not new issues, but rather targeted modifications necessary to fully address issues identified” in a February 2023 order, FERC said.
“Accordingly, we direct NERC to make the above modifications and submit the revised Reliability Standard within nine months of the date of issuance of this order,” it said.
