Speaking at a NERC-hosted webinar Sept. 4, a presenter from ReliabilityFirst urged attendees to take advantage of the resources available to them ahead of the upcoming winter months.
In his introduction to the webinar, Darrell Moore, NERC’s director of reliability risk management, observed that extreme winter events “have had a very significant impact on … reliability, readiness and security of the” grid over the last 15 years. That period has seen eight major storms, he pointed out, with winter storms Uri in 2021 and Elliott in 2022 causing widespread load shedding in Texas and the Southeast, respectively.
“As we get ready to enter another winter season, we must ensure the processes, equipment, procedures and personnel are prepared for this winter and future winter seasons,” Moore said.
Kellen Phillips, a principal analyst at RF, discussed the regional entity’s winterization assist program. Begun in 2014 after the polar vortex brought record-low temperatures and caused widespread generator failures, the program sees RF staff visit select generators — with the owners’ permission — and review their preparations for extreme cold weather.
Phillips said that while the program has conducted six to 12 visits per year on average since inception, the number of engagements has ramped up in the past few years, with 16 visits in the winter of 2023/24 and 20 in 2024/25.
Sites are selected based on requests submitted to RF from registered entities, narrowed down with data on cold weather-related losses over the previous two years from NERC’s Generator Availability Data System. RF also prefers to visit newly registered generators of 300 MW gross output or greater “to ensure they have a robust winterization program in place,” Phillips said. PJM, which operates in a large portion of the RE’s footprint, has been participating in the program for the past two years and attended most site visits in the most recent winter season.
Prior to the visit, plants complete an informational survey to provide RF staff with plant-specific information. Visits consist of a morning session, containing presentations from RF and PJM, followed by reviews of winterization procedures, processes and work orders; and an afternoon session, which mainly consists of a tour of the control room and the plant’s exterior examining how those processes are put into place.
“We try and get a lot of the heavy lifting done off-site and just cover the critical components on-site,” Phillips said. “We don’t take up too much of their time. We realize they’re trying to run the plant, which is not an easy task … so we try to get in and out as quick as we can.”
Items often checked by the RF team include heat tracing equipment and monitoring systems; temporary and permanent wind breaks; heating systems for the air inlets; and cooling tower de-icing systems. The visitors also check the winter supply areas to ensure that the equipment they listed in their preparation materials is ready.
A visit typically concludes with a final review and initial recommendations; the RE then prepares a full report on the visit, which usually is shared with the registered entity within two weeks. Phillips emphasized this report is not shared with NERC or FERC; however, RF does keep a file of best practices observed in previous visits that it updates each year, and also prepares a yearly after-action report that is available on its website.
Asked if the RE has decided which sites it will visit this year, Phillips said visits typically occur in December and January, and the team still is working through the data to determine where they will take place. He said RF probably will visit 20 to 30 generator facilities this winter.
