FERC’s 2025 IBR Rule Will Reshape U.S. Wind and Solar

Breaking: a new reliability floor for wind and solar

In late October 2025 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission completed its approvals under Order No. 901 for a first wave of inverter-based resource reliability standards developed by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. The headline is simple. Utility scale solar, wind, battery storage, and fuel cells will soon be required to ride through common grid disturbances, record what happened, and correct issues that show up in the data. The practical effect is a procurement and retrofit shift that begins in 2026 and runs through the decade. See how this intersects with FERC 1920-A transmission reforms as planning rules tighten across regions.

For anyone who builds, supplies, or operates inverter-based plants, the center of gravity moves from “do no harm” to “prove you can support the grid.” The winners will be the developers and manufacturers who treat these rules as product requirements, not paperwork.

What FERC actually approved

FERC’s July 24, 2025 vote approved the core reliability standards responding to the October 2023 directive in Order No. 901 on inverter-based performance. Additional actions through September and October 2025 clarified scope and put a finer point on who is registered and when clocks start. Three standards matter most for plant owners and suppliers:

PRC-029-1 Frequency and Voltage Ride-through Requirements for Inverter-Based Resources. This sets minimum ride through performance. Plants must remain connected during defined voltage and frequency excursions and must behave in specific ways during and after a disturbance.
PRC-028-1 Disturbance Monitoring and Reporting Requirements for inverter-based resources with companion updates to PRC-002-5. These extend disturbance monitoring and data capture to inverter-based plants so planners and operators can validate models and analyze events.
PRC-030-1 Unexpected Inverter-Based Resource Performance Mitigation. When a plant does not perform as required, the owner must analyze the cause and implement corrective actions on defined timelines.

Taken together, these standards convert reliability from a promise into a testable contract. They also align U.S. grid performance expectations with the capabilities already embedded in modern power electronics.

Who is covered

Bulk Electric System inverter-based resources. These are plants connected to the bulk system and typically 75 megavolt amperes or larger at 100 kilovolts and above. The Generator Owner and Generator Operator are the registered entities.
Non bulk inverter-based resources that meet Category 2 thresholds. This new class brings plants as small as 20 megavolt amperes that connect at 60 kilovolts or above into scope. Registration for these owners and operators is slated no later than May 2026, which is when their compliance journey starts in earnest.
Transmission planners and transmission operators. They are not the primary targets of PRC-029-1, PRC-028-1, and PRC-030-1, but they must consume better models, study them in planning and operations, and ensure ride through settings are consistent with regional practices.

If you own a wind farm with type 3 or type 4 turbines, a large photovoltaic plant, a grid scale battery system, or a fuel cell facility that connects at 60 kilovolts or above, assume you are covered. If you aggregate multiple inverters behind a single interconnection point, consider the aggregate nameplate when assessing eligibility. For offshore projects, shifts in cost and schedule highlighted in offshore wind buildout economics make early compliance positioning even more valuable.

The timelines that matter in 2026

These standards have two sets of clocks. One clock is the effective date of the standard itself. The other is when specific requirements inside each standard must be met.

Order effective date. FERC orders become effective 30 days after publication in the Federal Register. For the July 24, 2025 approvals, that put the first effective dates in late summer or early fall of 2025.
PRC-029-1 effective date. The standard becomes enforceable on the first day of the first calendar quarter that is twelve months after the approval’s effective date. In practice, that points to early fall of 2026 for bulk resources.
PRC-029-1 design versus operation. Generator Owners must be able to demonstrate by the effective date that plant design and protection settings meet the ride through criteria. The proof of operational performance is phased to the rollout of disturbance monitoring equipment under PRC-028-1.
PRC-028-1 disturbance monitoring. Monitoring is phased in through 2030. Bulk resources must equip plants progressively so that high resolution electrical quantities, event records, and sequence of events are available for analysis. New plants need the required monitoring on or shortly after commercial operation.
PRC-030-1 corrective action process. This standard becomes effective no earlier than twelve months after approval or after PRC-029-1 is effective. Non bulk Category 2 plants generally see earliest compliance dates on or after January 1, 2027 because registration must occur first.

If you prefer a one line mnemonic: design evidence by late 2026, operational proof as soon as the monitors are in, and full monitoring coverage across fleets by 2030.

What ride through actually requires

Ride through is not a vague promise to stay connected. PRC-029-1 codifies how an inverter-based plant behaves during common faults and frequency swings. Several specific ideas matter in engineering and procurement:

Must ride through zones. Voltage and frequency envelopes define when staying connected is mandatory, permissible, or continuous. These profiles closely track the industry’s IEEE 2800 performance envelopes for transmission connected inverter-based resources.
Reactive current injection. During a low voltage fault the plant must inject reactive current that supports voltage recovery. The response must be fast and proportional to the voltage deviation.
Phase angle jump tolerance. Control systems must tolerate a sudden change in the positive sequence voltage phase angle up to a specified number of electrical degrees. That protects against nuisance trips during line switching.
Rate of change of frequency. Plants should not trip for normal rates of frequency change within defined bounds. Frequency thresholds and timing are specified so that resources support stabilization rather than exit the system during an event.
Current blocking and recovery. If hardware enters current blocking during severe conditions, it must resume current injection promptly after the fault clears, with tight limits on the allowed recovery time.

This is why the rule will reshape projects. These are not labels on a datasheet. They are measurable behaviors that must be verified in type testing, commissioning, and events.

The procurement shift you will feel in 2026

The rules create a new minimum viable product for grid scale inverters, plant controllers, and protection schemes. Expect specifications and contract language to shift in four visible ways:

IEEE 2800 alignment becomes table stakes. The plant controller and inverter controls need to show conformance to IEEE 2800 performance envelopes and response times. Purchase orders will call out required dynamic functions, including low voltage ride through, high voltage ride through, reactive current injection, and post fault active power recovery.
Models must match the hardware. Transmission planners and interconnection service providers will begin to insist on validated models. That means sending plant parameter sets that are consistent across the user manual, PSCAD or EMT models, and the phasor domain models used in interconnection studies. Vendors that deliver well documented, version controlled models with validation reports will win schedule and trust.
Built in event recording. Disturbance monitoring is no longer a nice to have. Contracts will require high resolution oscillography, sequence of events records, and plant supervisory data with one second resolution. The most competitive offerings will make this data retrievable remotely with clear time synchronization and cybersecurity controls.
Firmware and settings governance. Ride through capability depends on firmware, protection settings, and plant level control logic. Utilities will expect change management files, rollback plans, and evidence that field settings equal the as modeled values. Vendors that ship a test harness for setting audits and a secure remote update process will stand out.

Why this triggers a retrofit wave

Existing plants commissioned under earlier interconnection rules often trip early during faults, have relaxed frequency settings, or lack adequate event recorders. PRC-029-1 allows a limited hardware limitation exemption, but it is narrow and must be justified. Meanwhile PRC-028-1 requires disturbance monitoring across fleets by 2030.

The economic signal is clear. Owners will upgrade inverters and plant controllers in priority order where energy and capacity revenues are at risk. Think large solar and wind plants in weak grid areas with frequent faults or large plants in markets where performance penalties are material. By 2026, integrators that can bundle controls upgrades, validated models, and monitoring in one mobilization will be booked out.

If you are a developer with a 2026 or 2027 commercial operation date, the least cost path is to buy the standards into your plant now. Retrofitting after commercial operation is almost always more expensive due to outage coordination and repeated commissioning.

How early adopters will win

Faster interconnection and fewer restudies. Validated models and IEEE 2800 level controls reduce uncertainty in studies. That shortens review cycles and reduces the risk of late stage surprises.
Better capacity accreditation. Plants that can prove steady performance during events will receive stronger recognition in capacity markets compared to peers with limited ride through settings.
Less curtailment and fewer forced outages. Plants that ride through avoid nuisance trips that can trigger days of reduced output while operators investigate and apply corrections.
Preferred supplier status. Utilities and off takers will begin to score proposals on compliance readiness. A vendor that offers a complete package with test reports, model validation, and remote monitoring will appear lower risk even at a slightly higher price. Rising demand pressures noted in AI’s power crunch and grid playbook make reliability proof a differentiator.

Actions for developers in 2025 and 2026

Update your inverter and plant controller specifications. Add explicit IEEE 2800 performance clauses and hold suppliers to PRC-029-1 behaviors including reactive current injection, phase jump tolerance, and rate of change of frequency limits. Require a conformance test report and a commissioning plan that demonstrates those behaviors at the point of interconnection.
Require complete models and validation evidence in RFPs. Ask for PSCAD or electromagnetic transient models, positive sequence dynamic models, test case decks, and a report that shows the as tested model against the as built plant. Tie payments to delivery and acceptance of these items.
Build a data pipeline for PRC-028-1. Specify disturbance monitoring equipment, time synchronization, storage, and retrieval in the plant’s balance of plant scope. Decide where analysis happens and how event packages will be produced for compliance.
Design for change. Include spare fiber, reserved controller inputs and outputs, and breaker control provisions so you can upgrade protection or add monitoring without a full outage. Budget for remote firmware management and field setting audits.
Plan the exemption strategy now. If a legacy plant has a genuine hardware limitation that prevents compliance with a specific ride through parameter, prepare the engineering basis, testing evidence, and mitigation steps before the exemption window opens. Exemptions are not a business model. They are a last resort.

Actions for original equipment manufacturers and integrators

Publish a 2800 aligned product profile. Translate the standard into a one page capability matrix that procurement teams can stick into contracts. Include response times, limits, and tested behaviors.
Ship models as part of the product. Treat PSCAD models, positive sequence models, and parameter tables as deliverables with version control and release notes. Provide a standard validation report template that customers can file for audits.
Make event recording turnkey. Offer integrated dynamic disturbance recording with plant wide triggers, one second supervisory data, and a secure method to export complete event packages. Provide a list of signal names and units that matches what planning and operations teams expect.
Offer a settings and firmware control kit. Give customers a way to compare plant field settings to model parameters and to roll back firmware safely. Build a test harness to exercise ride through logic during factory acceptance and pre energization checks.
Prepare a retrofit line of business. Bundle controller upgrades, protection setting rewrites, and monitoring additions into repeatable kits for common inverter families and plant architectures. Price and stock the parts by mid 2026.

Actions for utilities and transmission providers

Update your interconnection requirements and protection guides. Call out the required ride through behaviors in a way that references the standards without inventing conflicting rules. Provide clear test evidence expectations so suppliers know what will be accepted.
Prioritize model quality. Require validated models at interconnection, at substantial completion, and after the first major event. Decline studies that arrive with black box or unvalidated models. Reward projects that deliver clean models with faster reviews.
Build an event analysis playbook. Decide who collects the data, who analyzes it, and how corrective actions will be tracked under PRC-030-1. Align this process with outage scheduling so fixes can be implemented quickly.
Coordinate settings across the fleet. Prepare reference settings for frequency ride through, reactive current injection, and rate of change of frequency to avoid plant to plant inconsistency on the same transmission footprint.
Use procurement to move the market. Score bids on compliance readiness. Ask for IEEE 2800 conformance evidence, model validation reports, and event monitoring design in every request for proposals.

Practical examples of what changes in the field

A 200 megawatt solar plant that used to trip for a moderate line fault will now be required to stay connected, inject reactive current during the fault, and ramp back to pre disturbance power in a controlled way. If it trips instead, the plant’s disturbance monitoring will capture high resolution waveforms and discrete events. The owner will use that data to diagnose the cause and implement a firmware update or setting change under PRC-030-1.
A wind facility with long feeders will add distributed monitoring so that at least one inverter on each distant collector circuit records oscillography. This reveals whether all inverters behave the same and where blocking or control saturation occurs.
A battery facility will disable overly aggressive rate of change of frequency tripping, within allowed limits, to avoid exiting during frequency events. The plant controller will prioritize reactive current during low voltage conditions and shift back to active power dispatch after the grid recovers.

How to budget in 2026

Expect three buckets of cost. First, controls and protection upgrades. These are largely one time and are cheapest when bundled with other commissioning activities. Second, monitoring and data systems. These will require equipment, storage, cybersecurity integration, and an event analysis workflow. Third, compliance and model validation. Build an allowance for a third party or internal team to perform the model to plant comparisons and produce evidence packages after major events.

On the savings side, better ride through reduces revenue losses from nuisance trips and cuts down on curtailment tied to protection issues. Strong models can reduce the need for conservative interconnection assumptions that often force costly mitigation.

What to watch between now and mid 2026

Category 2 registration guidance. Clarifications on exactly which non bulk plants must register and when will shape the retrofit queue. Owners should assume plants at or above 20 megavolt amperes and connected at 60 kilovolts or above will be brought in.
Regional practices. Some grids may specify details such as reactive current ramps or post fault recovery rate. Align plant controller settings with local practices to avoid conflicts.
IEEE conformance testing. Watch for suppliers that can demonstrate IEEE 2800 conformance with third party test reports. When prices are similar, choose the option with the clearest evidence.

The bottom line

Order No. 901 set the direction in 2023. FERC’s 2025 approvals turned direction into deadlines. By late 2026 bulk inverter-based resources will need design evidence of ride through capability, with full operational proof arriving as disturbance monitoring rolls out. That is the opening for early adopters.

Treat the standards as design requirements in 2025 and 2026. Specify IEEE 2800 behaviors. Demand validated models and turnkey event recording. Build a corrective action muscle that can turn a bad event into a better plant within weeks. Do those things and compliance will not be a burden. It will be the reason your projects connect faster, operate steadier, and compete better as the rules phase in.