The Public Utility Commission of Texas on Oct. 21 unanimously passed a new weatherization standard for power plants in response to the deadly Arctic blast in February, which battered electricity infrastructure that was ill-prepared to withstand freezing conditions, leading to prolonged blackouts for millions of residents.

Commission Chairman Peter Lake called the vote a "substantial and landmark rulemaking" that will ensure "the physical resiliency of our grid is vastly improved this winter from last winter."

"Never before have we had such robust weatherization standards in place and enforcement authority," Commissioner Lori Cobos said.

During the Oct. 21 hearing, commissioners emphasized that the new standards represent a first phase of rulemaking intended to prepare the grid for the upcoming winter. A second phase will proceed as the Electric Reliability Council of Texas Inc., or ERCOT, conducts a weatherization study, which regulators will use to set benchmarks of extreme weather against which power plants must protect.

Under the phase one rule, the highest-ranking executives of companies that own generation and transmission assets in the ERCOT grid must provide notarized attestations by Dec. 1 to the PUC and ERCOT that they have prepared infrastructure for the upcoming winter. Such companies must fix any "known, acute" issues that occurred in the February freeze.

"I've been assured that generators are ahead of the game on this," Commissioner Will McAdams said during the meeting. "Winter is right around the corner."

SB 3, the sweeping power market reform bill that Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law in June, increased regulators' penalty authority to up to $1 million per violation of weatherization standards per day.

The phase one rule does not address the stepped-up penalties, but SB 3 gives regulators the authority to impose them.

"The Commission does not need to write a rule to exercise this new authority," Andrew Barlow, a PUC spokesman, said in an email of imposing increased fines on generators. "The Commission currently has that authority and intends to use it when needed."

While an administrative rulemaking is proceeding to amend the commission's authority to increase maximum penalties to $1 million from $25,000, "whenever a rule conflicts with a statute, the statute controls," Barlow said. (Control No. 52312)

An ERCOT spokesperson in September said the grid operator will review all winter readiness reports, as well as inspect up to 250 generators in December.

The new weatherization rule adopts recommendations from investigations in response to a 2011 winter storm, which caused blackouts for more than three million customers in ERCOT. Texas leaders failed to fully follow through on the recommendations, making the power grid unprepared for the more severe February storm a decade later.

Generators must follow recommendations of a 2012 report compiled by Quanta Technology that called for improvements on issues such as training, testing, preparation and reporting of weatherization activities. Transmission owners must follow recommendations laid out by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corp. in a 2011 report, which called for more coordination, planning and forecasting, as well as fortifying grid infrastructure.

"It will be incumbent on generation owners to prepare their units to be available should extreme weather conditions occur," said the Quanta report, which called for strengthening of emergency operations plans. "Good maintenance practices, precautionary emergency plan implementation, and due diligence to sustain maximum availability are key to assuring that resources are adequate during high load periods and under extreme environmental conditions."