In a recent filing, NERC urged FERC to approve its latest proposed cold weather standard without the changes called for by the Union of Concerned Scientists, which claimed that some of the standard’s provisions created loopholes against the commission’s intentions.

NERC filed EOP-012-3 (Extreme cold weather preparedness and operations) on April 10, following the approval of the ERO’s Board of Trustees the week before (RD25-7). (See NERC Board Approves Cold Weather Standard.) FERC had ordered the organization to undertake a set of “targeted modifications” to its predecessor EOP-012-2, which finally were completed after the board authorized bypassing NERC’s normal ballot and comment practice to meet the commission’s deadline. (See NERC Board Invokes Section 321 Authority for Cold Weather Standard.)

UCS, a nonprofit science advocacy group based in Massachusetts, filed its comments on April 10, raising issue with several aspects of the standard that it said did not address FERC’s concerns. The group urged the commission to “maintain pressure on the industry to adopt strong requirements without vague language enabling exemptions” that it claimed to find in NERC’s proposed standard.

NERC’s response, filed on May 28, said the ERO “appreciates the opportunity to clarify” the issues raised by UCS but maintained that EOP-012-3 “would meet [NERC’s] reliability goal of advancing generator cold weather preparedness effectively and efficiently” while satisfying FERC’s order directing the ERO to develop the standard.

Worries over Subjectivity of Standard

UCS’ first concern involved part of the standard dealing with cold weather constraints, situations in which a generator owner may declare that implementing a specific freeze protection measure would result in a net loss of reliability on the grid.

In its petition for approval, NERC gave the example of a measure that would result in the premature retirement of an existing generating unit with no acceptable replacement available. Such a declaration could result in an exemption from the requirement for that GO.

UCS argued that this measure is too subjective. It said the example would require compliance authorities to “establish that the GO was not planning to retire a given generator before the standard was in place,” and even after this difficult step, the authority would have to confirm that the freeze protection measures would cause the generator to become uneconomic to the point of requiring it to retire.

In response, NERC pointed out that the commission’s order recognized the risk of “unnecessarily burdensome” requirements that could lead to premature generator retirements, and said the standard was intended to address this concern. The ERO also pushed back against UCS’ suggestion that a market mechanism may render this item redundant, observing that its standards must apply across North America in a variety of market designs and ownership structures.

UCS raised similar objections to a provision allowing exceptions when freeze protection measures would lead a GO to cancel plans to finish developing a new unit; the group called this item subjective and said GOs should be aware of the need for such provisions “after repeated, serious threats to [grid] reliability.”

NERC agreed that GOs “have been aware of the need to take prompt action to address cold weather reliability risks” and said that it has shortened the timeline for implementing freeze protection measures since the first version of EOP-012. But it also reminded the commission that its order recognized that such situations could arise and directed the ERO to provide it a “limited set of clearly defined circumstances” under which exceptions could be granted; the item in question is “consistent with this guidance,” NERC said.

NERC Dismisses Loophole Claims

Next, UCS took issue with two items concerning retrofitting cold weather constraints to existing generation units: one in which freeze protection measures would void the warranty of a component, and one in which implementation of the measure would exceed a design limitation and impair or degrade the component or the system’s operation.

While UCS said these provisions could create “loopholes … to forgo freeze protections even when they are technically feasible” and called for them to be limited to new generation, NERC said they constitute “a reasonable and objective approach” to find constraints for existing or planned generation. The ERO also pointed out the standard “contains a built-in mechanism for ensuring constraint declarations remain up to date” in the form of a measure requiring all GOs to review their cold weather constraints every three years to verify their validity.

Finally, UCS claimed that EOP-012-3 could allow conflicts of interest by permitting a GO to declare constraints on the basis of testimony from “the appropriate functional entity,” which might be affiliated with the GO and therefore biased to support its constraint declaration.

NERC replied that the standard requires GOs to demonstrate the constraint’s applicability to their particular circumstances, and that constraints “must be approved by the compliance enforcement authority before the implementation of any otherwise-required freeze protection measures would be excused.” However, the ERO indicated it would restart the standard development process as needed should any conflict of interest be indicated in the implementation data.