FERC Revises Power Grid Data Collection Drudgery
Published Date: 12/22/2025
Notice
Summary
FERC is updating the rules for how power companies report important data to keep the electric grid safe and reliable. These changes affect generator owners, operators, and transmission folks who must follow new reporting steps. Comments on these updates are open until February 20, 2026, so get ready to share your thoughts and stay tuned for possible cost or time impacts.
Analyzed Economic Effects
3 provisions identified: 0 benefits, 3 costs, 0 mixed.
Definitions Expanded to Add Category 2 Resources
On October 1, 2025, FERC approved revised NERC definitions so that generator owner and generator operator now include non‑BES inverter‑based resources that have or contribute to an aggregate nameplate capacity of greater than or equal to 20 MVA and are connected through a system primarily delivering that capacity to a common point at voltage greater than or equal to 60 kV (called category 2). As a result, those category 2 generator owners and operators will be subject to the reporting and compliance obligations in the eight listed Reliability Standards.
Estimated Annual Paperwork Hours and Costs
FERC estimated the additional annual reporting burden and costs for the eight collections. For example: FERC-725T totals 332 hours and $21,088.64 annually; FERC-725Z totals 6,408 hours and $407,036.10; FERC-725L totals 9,820 hours and $623,766.40; FERC-725G totals 39,280 hours and $2,495,065.60; FERC-725A totals 6,408 hours and $407,036.16; and FERC-725X totals 12,816 hours and $814,072.32.
New Specific Operational Reporting Duties
Category 2 generator owners and operators will have to meet specific requirements across the listed standards, such as setting governor parameters and notifying others when governors are unavailable (BAL-001-TRE-2 Requirements R6–R10), providing data and documented specifications to reliability coordinators for planning and real‑time operations (IRO-010-5 R3; TOP-003-6.1 R5), supplying modeling data to planning coordinators/transmission planners (MOD-032-1 R2–R3), participating in remedial action scheme testing and maintenance (PRC-012-2 R1, R3, R5–R8; PRC-017-1 R1–R2), and meeting voltage/reactive control and automatic voltage control obligations including notifying transmission operators of changes and providing tap settings and voltage set point methods (VAR-001-5 E.A.15 & E.A.17; VAR-002-4.1 R1–R6).
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Key Dates
Department and Agencies
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