Project-2024-03-Revisions-to-EOP-012-2

 

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Status
A 45-day comment period for draft three of EOP-012-3 Extreme Cold Weather Preparedness and Operations is open through 8 p.m. Eastern, Wednesday, March 12, 2025. There is no ballot associated with this comment period. ​

​In June 2024, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved Reliability Standard EOP-012-2 and directed NERC to submit a revised version to address and clarify several aspects. The draft EOP-012-3 standard only achieved 44.54% approval on its most recent ballot, representing only a 2% improvement from the previous ballot.

To meet FERC's March 27, 2025, deadline, and in deference to the importance of this standard, the Board invoked its authority under Section 321.5 of NERC's Rules of Procedure. Under this authority, the Board directed the Standards Committee, with the assistance of stakeholders and NERC staff, to prepare a responsive standard, which will then be posted for a 45-day public comment period no later than January 29, 2025. A special Board meeting will take place in March 2025 to review the standard and a complete record, including the comments submitted during the public comment period.

Background
​NERC developed the original version of the generator cold weather preparedness Reliability Standard, Reliability Standard EOP-012-1, in 2022 under Project 2021-07 Extreme Cold Weather Grid Operations, Preparedness, and Coordination. The purpose of this project was to address standards-related recommendations from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)/NERC/Regional Entity staff review of operations during the February 2021 Winter Storm Uri event.

NERC developed Reliability Standard EOP-012-2 in 2023-2024 to address Commission directives from the February 2023 order approving Reliability Standards EOP-012-1 and EOP-011-3. In the February 2023 Order, the Commission directed that NERC revise EOP-012-1 to clarify the applicability of the standard's requirements for generator cold weather preparedness, further define the circumstances under which a Generator Owner may declare that constraints preclude them from implementing one or more corrective actions to address freezing issues, and to shorten the implementation timeline so cold weather reliability risks would be addressed more quickly.

On June 27, 2024, FERC issued an order approving Reliability Standard EOP-012-2. While finding Reliability Standard EOP-012-2 represented an improvement over the prior version and addressed many of its concerns, FERC found the standard requires further improvement to address certain concerns remaining from its February 2023 order. FERC therefore directed NERC to revise the standard in five areas and to submit a revised standard within nine (9) months of the date of the order, or by March 27, 2025.  

Standard Affected: EOP-012-2

Purpose/Industry Need
The purpose of this project is to address the directives identified by FERC in its June 27, 2024 order approving Reliability Standard EOP-012-2 and directing further modifications. N. Am. Elec. Reliability Corp., 187 FERC ¶ 61,204 (2024), available here. In that order, FERC found that further improvements needed to be made to address ambiguous language and address other reliability gaps/implementation issues in the standard and related definitions to fully address issues first raised in the Commission's February 2023 Order approving EOP-012-1. FERC directed that NERC submit the modifications within 9 months of the date of the order, or by March 27, 2025.

Proposed Project Timeline 
The project timeline is listed below for industry awareness. This table will be updated with any changes as the project progresses.​​