RTOs Against NERC’s Winter Reliability Standards

The North American Electric Reliability Corp. has proposed cold weather reliability standards—a group of North American RTO/ISOs (aka power markets), has filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission urging it to reject NERC’s standards.

“Settling for the standard that NERC has filed in this proceeding, with its glaring exceptions and vague requirements, will only result in reliability issues that the Commission will need to address later and at a greater cost to generator owners and the public,” the RTOs said.

NERC has been trying to formulate cold weather reliability standards since the Uri blackouts in Texas in 2021.

One of the RTO’s major complaints about NERC’s proposal is the “Generator Cold Weather Constraint” element that would allow power plant owners to exempt themselves from freeze protection measures if such measures fall beyond a “reasonable cost consistent with good business practices, reliability, or safety.”

“Enforcing the standard when this exception is invoked effectively injects NERC and the Regional Entities into the process of judging the reasonableness of costs, cost estimates, and even the particular Generator Owner’s specific financial situation,” the the RTOs said. While costs are important, they argued, they fall under FERC’s aegis, not NERC’s.

“Constraint declarations based on claims of unreasonable costs will prove to be difficult or impossible to audit effectively and consistently,” they added.

The council of RTOs that submitted the complaint includes Alberta Electric System Operator, the California Independent System Operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the Independent Electricity System Operator of Ontario, ISO New England, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, the New York Independent System Operator, the PJM Interconnection, and the Southwest Power Pool.

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