FERC, NERC call for greater industry preparedness to prevent winter outages

Alarmed by the February 2021 power outages that afflicted millions in Texas and the Midwest, staff from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) released a preliminary report this week detailing the need for greater industry preparation.

“This is a wake-up call for all of us,” FERC Chairman Rich Glick said. “There was a similar inquiry after Texas experienced extreme cold weather in 2011, but those recommendations were not acted on. We can’t allow this to happen again. This time, we must take these recommendations seriously, and act decisively, to ensure the bulk power system doesn’t fail the next time extreme weather hits. I cannot, and will not, allow this to become yet another report that serves no purpose other than to gather dust on the shelf.”

Both the electric and natural gas industries were in the crosshairs of the report, which detailed the occurrences of the February freeze and used them as a basis for future recommendations, such as mandatory electric reliability standards, as a means of preventing repetition. Beyond such revision, the report outlined eight other recommendations:

• Require generator owners to identify and protect cold weather-critical components;
• Regulators should require all aspects of the natural gas supply chain to have cold weather preparedness plans;
• Natural gas production, gathering and processing facilities should consider means of protection against freezing and other limitations;
• Creation of a forum for state legislatures and/or regulators, in cooperation with FERC, NERC, regional entities and more, to identify concrete means of improving natural gas system reliability;
• Identify reliability risks of natural gas fuel contracts and communicate them;
• Joint technical conferences to discuss improvements for generator winter readiness;
• Operator inspections and maintenance of freeze protection measures prior to and during winter;
• Planning Coordinators should retool their approaches to better predict reserve margins during winter peak conditions.

The February freeze that caused all this had initiated a loss of 61,800 MW of electric generation. Natural gas production likewise tumbled as a result, with the most severe effects experienced in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. Their combined production fell more than 50 percent compared to the average production from February 1-5. Much of this was caused by freezing generator components and fuel issues, with 57 percent of the affected units being natural gas-fired.

A final report should follow in November.