The Generating Availability Data System (GADS) is a database produced by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC).
[2] This information, collected for both total unit and major equipment groups, is used by analysts industry-wide in numerous applications.
[3] Recently, in response to the deregulated energy markets, the Equivalent Forced Outage Rate – Demand (EFORd) has taken on greater importance: Industry Development of GADS Before any data element was included in GADS, an industry committee to determine its applicability to utility operation and RAM analyses scrutinized it.
A series of industry meetings were held to discuss the analytical usefulness of each element and to determine if utilities could reasonably provide that data to GADS.
GADS superseded the earlier data collection procedures begun by the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), a program started in the mid-1960s.