On July 18, 2019 FERC and NERC issued a joint report on the January 17, 2018 South Central Cold Weather Event. During the event, a large area of the south central region of the United States experienced unusually cold weather. The below-average temperatures in this area resulted in a total of 183 individual generating units experiencing either an outage, a derate, or a failure to start between January 15 and January 19, with approximately 14,000 MW of capacity becoming unavailable between January 15 and the morning peak hour on January 17. While the system remained stable, the loss of generation capacity resulted in system conditions such that if the next single contingency generation outage occurred for one of the entities, continued reliable BES operations would have depended on system operators shedding firm load promptly to prevent further degradation of BES conditions.
The joint inquiry focused on identifying the causes of, and contributing factors to, the event, and identifying appropriate recommendations for improving operations under similar conditions.
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South Central U.S. Cold Weather Event of January 17, 2018 - FERC and NERC Staff Report
