Spring awakens us like no other season. It is the perfect time to reflect, look back and evaluate.

The ideal time to introduce MRO’s inaugural Generator Winterization Program General Findings Report, which highlights key findings from the first two years of MRO’s Generator Winterization Program (GWP). Sharing information, best practices and lessons learned with the Generator Owners/Generator Operators within MRO’s regional footprint is the objective of the GWP. The program is meant to assist registered entities with generator cold weather preparation and is outside of any compliance or enforcement activities.

The GWP General Findings Report offers recommendations to help reduce weather-related risks and improve generator performance during cold weather. The goal of this report and the GWP is to help prevent recurrence of a large-scale, unplanned outage due to cold weather. Additionally, Generation Unavailability During Extreme Cold Weather was identified as a high risk in MRO’s 2023 Regional Risk Assessment, and the GWP and resulting report are mitigating activities MRO is undertaking to address this high risk.   

Cold weather continues to have an impact on the reliability of generation and is a recognized high risk across the industry. Raising awareness of, and helping industry prepare for, extreme cold weather will continue to be a focus area for both MRO and the ERO Enterprise. It is important to take time to reflect on progress in this area and we hope the information in the summary report is helpful as each entity plans improvements to winter weather winterization programs. Special thanks to all of those that participated in 2021-2022.

Please send GWP questions to [email protected].

– Summer Stephens, MRO Senior Reliability Specialist