12. Department of Energy and Related Commissions · Minor
Revise the definition and calculation of electric reserve margins
Printed page 402 12. Department of Energy and Related Commissions
“Update the definition and calculation of reserve margins to support reliability. FERC, NERC, and DOE should revise the definition of reserve margins to ensure the grid’s reliability throughout the day and the year. This will mean recognizing that reserve margins may need to consider “net peak” and exclude non-dispatchable resources from inclusion in reserve margin calculations.”
What has happened
- Partially done
DOE delivered the methodology limb. Under EO 14262 section 3(b) it published its Report on Evaluating U.S. Grid Reliability and Security on 7 July 2025, a uniform reserve-margin methodology for every FERC-regulated region that accredits generation resources by the historical performance of each resource type under stressed conditions rather than by nameplate capacity, and used it to identify at-risk regions to 2030. Partial rather than done: FERC and NERC have not changed their own reserve-margin definitions, and no net-peak definition was adopted in a standard.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
The Quote names FERC, NERC and DOE together. One of the three acted, and the accreditation-by-historical-performance change is the substance of excluding non-dispatchable resources from reserve margins.
FERC orders are not published in the Federal Register, and ferc.gov would not open for us, so any Commission order after the notices cited could not be read.
- Action
- other
- Object
- electric grid reserve margins
- ID
- 1022