Get your cold-weather plan audit-ready this summer

We are ramping up to summer, and colder weather is the last thing on most of our minds. Which is exactly why it is the easiest thing to let slide. EOP-012-3, the extreme cold weather preparedness and operations standard, has been in force since last October, and NERC has kept cold weather preparedness in its compliance-monitoring focus. The window to get your evidence in order is the stretch before the next freeze, not the moment a spot-check or data request comes asking. If one asked for your freeze-protection evidence this cycle, would you be ready, or would you be assembling it under the clock?

The season's reliability picture is in too: NERC's 2026 Summer Reliability Assessment flags three regions at elevated risk as demand climbs and large loads strain the grid. Both are below.

Product Updates

Our API Has a New Home

The Raptor Comply REST API documentation has moved to docs.raptorcomply.com. You can sync assets into a CMDB, feed a SIEM, integrate with a CMMS, or automate evidence workflows. It includes an authentication guide, a five-minute quickstart, endpoint reference with copy-ready request and response examples, and integration tutorials. Current coverage spans facilities, control centers, cyber systems, and cyber assets.

Access Control Reporting

Access control report exports now live on the Evidence folder page, with expanded filters, more columns, and richer report content. Pull an audit-ready access control report from where your evidence already lives.

Export Policy Documents as Audit-Ready PDFs

You can now download any policy or program from the editor as a PDF, ready to hand to an auditor or distribute internally. The export carries platform metadata in the header, including the date the document was last reviewed by your CIP Senior Manager, so the proof of periodic review travels with the document.

Industry Update

Summer Is the Window to Get Your Cold-Weather Plan Audit-Ready

Cold weather compliance is a winter exposure, and the time to get ready for it is before the freeze, not during it. EOP-012-3, the extreme cold weather preparedness and operations standard for generators, has been in force since October 1, 2025, and NERC has kept cold weather preparedness in its compliance-monitoring focus. With the next cold season still months out, now is the window to confirm last winter's plan was actually exercised and that your evidence would survive a spot-check, instead of finding the gaps when the next data request lands.

EOP-012-3 is the generator-facing piece of a wider temperature set. Its companion planning standard, TPL-008-1 (effective April 2026), falls on Planning Coordinators and Transmission Planners, not generators, but it reshapes the study assumptions your interconnection sits inside.

One nuance worth tracking: the standard carries an enforcement-abeyance period through October 1, 2027 for good-faith issues with the R1 extreme cold weather temperature calculation, so confirm where your program sits on R1 specifically.

Why Now: The Grid Is Under Growing Strain

NERC's 2026 Summer Reliability Assessment, just out, is not a compliance document, but it is the backdrop. Aggregate peak demand across all assessment areas is up more than 11 GW from last summer, and the grid has added more than 58.5 GW of new resources, led by solar (over 30 GW nameplate) and more than 16 GW of new battery storage. Three areas are flagged for elevated risk this summer: New England, Saskatchewan, and the Northwest, where the April 1 snowpack sat at 52% of normal in a fleet that is more than half hydro. The report also names large computational loads directly: both the Eastern and ERCOT Interconnections saw roughly 1,500 MW of voltage-sensitive load drop off in single events. The pressure that exposes a weak compliance program is rising, not easing.

Important Dates

• June 18, 2026: FERC June Open Meeting. Reliability standards docket items typically appear on the agenda.

• July 16, 2026: FERC July Open Meeting.