GADS 2021 Winter Event Reporting

by ronfluegge 20. April 2021 01:50

In February 2021, the central United States experienced extended periods of record low temperatures creating conditions which resulted in power outages across multiple states. In the interest of being able to identify generator events that were a direct result of the low temperatures, NERC and the GADS User Group (GADSUG) are requesting that entities use the following reporting guidelines.

Cause Coding During the Cold Weather Event

For events that occurred from February 8, 2021 through February 20, 2021 and that were a result of the cold weather event.

  1. Create and code the event as is normally done.
    • Identify any equipment that failed using the Primary Cause Code.
    • If additional cause codes are necessary, include them as the secondary, tertiary, etc… causes.
  2. Add an additional cause code, 9036 – Storms (Ice, snow, etc), after adding all Cause Codes that would normally be included.
  3. Ensure that the Description of the event is filled out.
    • Describe what happened to cause the outage.
    • If possible, include information on whether or not the equipment was considered winterized at the time of the event.

Events which are not attributable to the cold weather event during this period should be reported as usual  

For more information: GADS 2021 Cold Weather Event Reporting   

For details and implementation steps, click on

Event Verbal Descriptions

by ronfluegge 14. December 2011 23:30

Since the 86-character event verbal description is no longer a “required” field (voluntary but strongly recommended), we have been asked if it possible in a future release to add an extra 86 chars (or even 50 chars) on the “Verbal Description (86 characters maximum)” field and have these showing on the reports as well?  This would be in addition to the “expanded verbal description” that already exists and allows up to 4,000 characters.  The expanded verbal description was intended as a separate and complete standalone description of the event … just longer in content.

There is already an option to first enter the expanded verbal description; then the software will take the first 86 characters of the expanded verbal description and put them in the event verbal description field … so in essence doing what is suggested.  But these 86 characters are the same in both fields.

If enough users feel that this is a necessary or recommended change, we will consider adding the change in 2012.

Please let me know your thoughts by reply email at your earliest convenience.  Please respond if you would like such a change and if so, how many characters total?

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