The electric and natural gas industries need to strengthen their winterization and cold weather preparedness and coordination to prevent a recurrence of the unprecedented February 2021 power outages to millions of people during the February 2021 freeze in Texas and the Midwest.

That is the assessment of a preliminary report presented at today’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) meeting by a joint inquiry team of staff from FERC and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and its regional entities. The report reviews what happened during the freeze and outlines a series of recommendations, including mandatory electric reliability standards, to prevent its recurrence.

https://www.nerc.com/news/Headlines%20DL/2021%20Winter%20Freeze%20092321.pdf 

In February 2021, the central United States experienced extended periods of record low temperatures creating conditions which resulted in power outages across multiple states. In the interest of being able to identify generator events that were a direct result of the low temperatures, NERC and the GADS User Group (GADSUG) are requesting that entities use the following reporting guidelines.

Cause Coding During the Cold Weather Event

For events that occurred from February 8, 2021 through February 20, 2021 and that were a result of the cold weather event.

1. Create and code the event as is normally done.
• Identify any equipment that failed using the Primary Cause Code.
• If additional cause codes are necessary, include them as the secondary, tertiary, etc… causes.
2. Add an additional cause code, 9036 – Storms (Ice, snow, etc), after adding all Cause Codes that would normally be included.
3. Ensure that the Description of the event is filled out.
• Describe what happened to cause the outage.
• If possible, include information on whether or not the equipment was considered winterized at the time of the event.

Events which are not attributable to the cold weather event during this period should be reported as usual  

For more information: GADS 2021 Cold Weather Event Reporting   

For details and implementation steps, click on https://gadsopensource.com/NERCNews.aspx