NERC Advances Extreme Weather Protection and Energy Assurance

At its December meeting, NERC’s Board of Trustees took important actions to mitigate extreme weather impacts on the grid, help assure adequate energy supply, and strengthen cybersecurity protections through the approval of new and modified standards.
To plan for the future, the Board also approved NERC’s 2025 work plan priorities, the updated ERO Enterprise Long-Term Strategy and Board compensation and meeting schedule changes beginning in 2026.
“The actions in front of us today show that NERC continues to make progress on addressing extreme weather challenges, resulting in ongoing reliability, but we must keep moving forward,” said Ken DeFontes, board chair.
The Board approved the 2025–2027 Reliability Standards Development Plan, which includes time frames and anticipated resources for each project under development or anticipated to begin by the end of the year.
The Board also adopted existing standards modifications as well as some new standards focused on extreme weather and energy assurance:
1 – Project 2023-04 – Modifications to CIP-003-11 Cyber Security Management Controls mitigates the risks posed by a coordinated attack using distributed low-impact Bulk Electric System cyber systems by adding controls to authenticate remote users, protect the authentication information in transit and detect malicious communications.
2 – Project 2023-07 – Transmission System Planning Performance Requirements for Extreme Temperature Events (TPL-008-1) ensures that planning entities are better prepared for the impacts of extreme hot and cold temperatures on the transmission system and addresses Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Order 896.
3 – Project 2021-03 – Bulk Electric System Categorization (CIP-002-8) provides improved risk identification by addressing the proper identification of Transmission Owner control centers that perform the functional obligations of a Transmission Operator, specifically those meeting medium-impact criteria.
4 – Project 2022-03 – Energy Assurance with Energy Constrained Resources (BAL-007-1 and TOP-003-7) enhances reliability by requiring entities to perform energy reliability assessments to evaluate energy assurance and develop corrective action plans, operating plans or other mitigating actions to address identified risks in the operations time horizon.
In other Board action: In response to a FERC directive, the Board authorized NERC to issue a cold weather data request under Section 1600 of the Rules of Procedure to collect and analyze generator data and submit an annual informational filing. The data request complements existing cold weather preparedness efforts, and the data will help evaluate what portion of a generator’s fleet can perform at the extreme cold weather temperatures for the location, what portion is under a corrective action plan (and until when) and what portion will not be winterized due to declared constraints. In addition, FERC also directed NERC to assess actual performance of freeze protection measures during future extreme cold weather events and to develop an informational filing reporting annually on the data and analysis.
NERC’s 2025 work plan priorities, which serve as NERC’s goalposts for executing the third year of its 2023–2025 plan, also received approval from the Board. The work plan priorities for 2025 are the result of a rigorous prioritization process that highlights NERC’s continued focus on the most critical activities that will further each of the four focus areas:
1 – Energy.
2 – Security.
3 – Agility
4 – Sustainability.
NERC will report on progress throughout 2025.