by Leland McMillan, Supervisor, NERC Services
Good news is nice to hear, especially when it comes to cold weather and performance of the Bulk Electric System. January 2025 saw another round of winter events, including winter Storms Blair, Cora, Demi, and Enzo. FERC and NERC performed a joint report, which indicates “The team has identified improvements in generator availability and firm load shed since Winter Storms Uri and Elliott.” The entire report is a good read, but here are a few key highlights quoted from the report:
Performance Summary
FERC explains that, despite similar cold weather conditions to previous storms, grid resiliency has increased and explains why:
The team observed that the participating entities have many practices and procedures pertaining to extreme cold weather generator performance, communication protocols, energy transfers, load forecasting, advanced unit commitments, and natural gas operations that enhance their preparations and responses to extreme cold weather. The team believes that these implemented operating practices led to improved outcomes compared to prior winter storms. Incorporating these operational practices,50 where it can be done practically, effectively and efficiently, could further increase the reliability of the grid during extreme weather events. Between January 21 and 22, 2025, natural gas demand peaked at 150 Bcf/day, electric demand peaked at 683 GW,51 and unplanned outages peaked at 71,022 MW. Nevertheless, during the January 2025 arctic events, manual load shed was not required. Factors that could have potentially led to improved performance to mitigate the impact of the unplanned generation outages include: scheduling additional generation and having adequate reserves, energy transfers, and coordination between natural gas and electric entities.
Outstanding Issues
Despite improved performance, our industry has more work to do. The report identifies various improvements, which includes coordination amongst the natural gas and electric industry. Many people reading this article may not be able to address the gas supply issue, but we can all work on this item:
Despite the overall adequate grid performance during the January 2025 arctic events, a critical and persistent gap remains: mechanical and electrical generator outages. This trend reinforces the urgency of implementing recommendations from past cold weather event reports, including Uri Report Recommendation 11 and Elliott Report Recommendation 2.62 The continued prevalence of these outages suggests that existing preparations may be insufficient or inconsistently applied, indicating a need for a more robust approach to continued winter preparedness. Namely, these causes accounted for approximately 54 percent of generator outages with a reported outage cause. The recurrence of these issues across multiple extreme weather events points to a systemic vulnerability in generator fleet resilience that has yet to be fully addressed.