Item A-3 | Presentation | Report
FERC today announced its actions on all 28 recommendations from the FERC-North American Electric Reliability Corporation Joint Inquiry Report on Winter Storm Uri, the 2021 freeze that caused outages in Texas and the South-Central U.S.
“Last year I pledged that FERC would work with our regulatory partners to take action designed to avoid a repeat of the outages during Winter Storm Uri and that the report we issued last year would not be another in the long line of reports that simply gather dust on a shelf,” FERC Chairman Rich Glick said.
“One year later I am proud to say that we have made a lot of progress,” Glick added. “We have empowered FERC staff to work with NERC and its regional entities, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) and the North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB) to follow through on addressing the recommendations in the joint report.”
Today’s update, presented at FERC’s monthly meeting, highlights actions taken on the recommendations from the report, including:
- NERC submitted to the Commission, ahead of schedule, its first set of proposed nationwide standards for generator winterization and freeze protection to the Commission in October. The Commission is now reviewing those proposed standards.
- The Commission hosted a Winter Readiness Technical Conference in April and New England Winter Gas-Electric Forum in September.
- NAESB convened its first Gas-Electric Harmonization Forum in August, followed by four additional meetings, and is planning more for 2023.
- The Commission initiated studies across several areas including additional interconnection links into the Electric Reliability Council of Texas and identification of critical natural gas infrastructure
The full FERC-NERC report on Winter Storm Uri, issued in November 2021, is available here.
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