IESO Cold Weather Preparedness

Extreme cold weather conditions can cause operational issues at generation and transmission facilities that in turn impacts the Independent Electricity System Operator’s ability to reliably operate the grid. Following a January 2018 cold weather event that impacted the south central region of the United States, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) and North American Electric Reliability Corporation (“NERC”) jointly developed a report to identify lessons learned and best practices, and stressed the need to adequately prepare for winter weather conditions to ensure grid reliability. Further information can be found here. Ontario experienced an extreme cold weather event in January 2019 where approximately 2,100 MW of generator capacity was lost in the span of two hours due to cold weather related issues. Following this, the IESO prepared Winterization Guidelines, which can be found here. In preparation for the upcoming winter, we would like you to conduct the following survey.