BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 66
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Date of Hearing: April 29, 2013
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON UTILITIES AND COMMERCE
Steven Bradford, Chair
AB 66 (Muratsuchi) - As Amended: March 14, 2013
SUBJECT : Local electric reliability
SUMMARY : This bill would require the California Public
Utilities Commission (PUC) to require an electrical corporation
to publish and maintain on the electrical corporation's Internet
Web site a report describing local level system reliability
problems. Specifically, this bill :
a)Requires the PUC to require an electrical corporation to
publish and maintain on the electrical corporation's Internet
Web site a report describing local level system reliability
problems, including, the frequency and duration of
interruptions in services ranked by areas with both the most
frequent and longest outages.
b)Requires the reports to be updated at least quarterly.
EXISTING LAW
1)Requires the PUC to set inspection, maintenance, repair, and
replacement standards. (Public Utilities Code 330(i))
2)Requires the PUC to adopt inspection, maintenance, and
replacement standards for the distribution systems of
investor-owned electric utilities no later than March 31, 1997
to provide for high quality, safe and reliable service.
(Public Utilities Code 364)
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
COMMENTS :
1)Author's Statement. "For too long, cities, businesses, and
residents along the Palos Verdes Peninsula - and across
California - have suffered from frequent and at times lengthy
power outages. These outages led to hundreds of acres being
burned, food being spoiled, and residents being left without
recourse. AB 66 allows consumers to see quarterly outage
reports from their electrical corporations, while providing
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the California Public Utilities Commission and Californians
with readily accessible information that can be utilized for
better infrastructure planning. Transparency has been shown
to be good for business and for consumer relations. AB 66
provides Californians with information they have a right to
know, and provides a mechanism for accountability for rate
payers."
2)Local Reliability Problems. According to the author, since
2008, the city of Rancho Palos Verdes and other cities on the
Palos Verdes Peninsula have dealt with an average of
twenty-six power outages a year. A 2012 Rancho Palos Verdes
staff report cited over 100 unscheduled outages from 2008-2011
occurring within the city. These power outages have raised
concerns about the frequent open space fires caused by
electrical failures and accidents that threaten lives and
property. Since 2005, there have been at least three fires
attributed to service disruptions in the region. Outage
related fires have resulted in approximately 200 open space
acres being destroyed. Inconsistent electricity service in
Rancho Palos Verdes and throughout the South Bay has resulted
in growing frustration amongst ratepayers in the region.
3)Current Reliability Reporting Requirements . Through Public
Utilities Commission Decision D9609045 and subsequent
decisions, the PUC adopted incident reporting rules to ensure
that the PUC is able to monitor incidents that affect utility
operations or facilities. The annual reports provide
information on:
a) The top ten power outage events based on
customer-minutes, excluding events such as weather,
declared emergencies, or disasters affecting over 10% of
the utility's customers; and
b) Circuits in which customers have experienced greater
than twelve sustained outages in a reporting year.
These reports are compiled and published annually on the PUC
website.
PUC Decision D9609045 does require circuit-level reliability
information to be made available in response to a request by
an interested party. This decision states that: "Reliability
indices using a portion of the system (circuit, division,
region, or district), or smaller time periods (no smaller than
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a month), should be recorded and provided to any interested
person upon request. In a footnote, the Decision states:
Utilities should record information at whichever of these
levels (circuit, district, division, or region) their then
current information collecting capacities exist at."
In this Decision, the PUC expressed concern over groups of
customers being served on a common cluster of distribution
facilities that experience repeated disruption and inform the
PUC of their difficulty in arranging for the necessary repair
or maintenance work. The PUC expressed a desire to spotlight
such clusters of customers in a manner that orients the
utilities' work and consolidates customer complaint
information in a meaningful fashion. For example, customers
in a common neighborhood, served from a common distribution
feeder, who have experienced on average an outage over 5
minutes on a monthly basis over any annual period are
suffering from a typically poor system reliability, are
complaining directly to the Commission about difficulties
obtaining repair work, and may simply be falling through the
cracks. The PUC expressed that this type of recording and
reporting would assist the utility in prioritizing work, and
allow the PUC intervene and mandate remediation on a broad
basis if the reporting becomes extensive and repetitively
identifies the same clustered areas.
On this same subject, the PUC stated: "Although the utilities
may not like the public attention they may receive from
disclosure of information regarding circuit performance, we
will not hide information from the media or the general public
on the basis that the utilities might be inconvenienced by any
public attention it draws."
As a result of this Decision and subsequent PUC actions, the
five largest electric utilities annually report standard
information on the duration and frequency of outages and
identify problem divisions and circuits, duration and
frequency of sustained and momentary outages using System
Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI), System Average
Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI), and Momentary Average
Interruption Frequency Index (MAIFI), with and without
excludable major events for the past 10 years.
In addition, the reports include System Average Interruption
Duration Index Exceeding Threshold (SAIDIET), the minutes of
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sustained outages per customer per year exceeding a defined
annual threshold of 150 minutes and the Estimated Restoration
Time (ERT), which is the sum of the weighted accuracy of each
outage divided by the number of customers who experienced an
outage. (Weighted accuracy is determined by using the time in
play and number of customers who received accurate estimates).
1)Local outage information . Currently, PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E
provide real-time information on their websites showing
locations and number of customers affected by outages. This
information shows the start time of the outage, the estimated
restoration time, the number of customers impacted, and the
cause (if available).
2)Is another report necessary? AB 66 mandates that the PUC
require electrical corporations to publish a report on local
level system reliability problems. The report is to include
the frequency and duration of interruptions in services ranked
by areas with both the most frequent and longest outages. The
report would be updated quarterly.
A review of the current Reliability Reports on file at the PUC
reveals that information is presented in a manner that does
not provide the location of the areas that might be
experiencing more frequent outages than perhaps other areas
within the corporation's service area. An example of the data
presented in the 2011 SDG&E report shows the following
information:
--------------------------------------------------------------
| CRITERIA |SAIDI | SAIFI | MAIFI |SAIDET|ERT |
| | | | | | |
|--------------------------+------+--------+-------+------+----|
|Including PUC Major |567.59| 1.472 | 0.239 | - | - |
|Events (2011) | | | | | |
|--------------------------+------+--------+-------+------+----|
|Excluding PUC Major |54.14 | 0.473 | 0.239 |26.24 |59% |
|Events (2011) | | | | | |
|--------------------------+------+--------+-------+------+----|
|10-Year Average |155.49| 0.751 | 0.527 | - | - |
|(2002-2011) Including PUC | | | | | |
|Major Events | | | | | |
|--------------------------+------+--------+-------+------+----|
|10-Year Average |64.22 | 0.580 | 0.508 | - |- |
|(2002-2011) Excluding PUC | | | | | |
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|Major Events | | | | | |
--------------------------------------------------------------
This information is also available over the prior 10-year
period but does not provide an understanding of where the
utility may be experiencing frequent regional reliability
issues because system averages don't provide insights into the
data outliers: areas with high reliability and areas where
service interruptions are more frequent.
PG&E does provide regional information in its report. The
regional information shows reliability indices in each of
PG&E's Divisions. If a customer knows which Division services
their area they might be able see whether their area was more
or less reliable than other areas. However, the information
does show information on what might be occurring within the
Division. SDG&E did not provide regional information in its
2011 report. SCE shows circuit level statistics in its 2011
report.
While these reports are very useful, information on the
frequency and location of regions with reliability problems
would help to give clarity and meaning to the incidents
described in the statistical analyses.
It should be noted that the electrical system is not deployed
consistent with political boundaries of cities and counties.
In addition, for security reasons, it may be necessary and
appropriate to be less specific and instead generally indicate
the regions when ranking frequency and location of regions
with reliability problems. The PUC could solicit input from
the electrical corporations on including regional information
in the annual reliability reports and ensure that the data
present regional reliability information aggregated to the
level necessary to protect system security.
In addition, it may not be necessary or useful to provide this
information on a quarterly basis when what is actually being
sought is a trend analysis: how frequently is a particular
area within a service area having more frequent momentary or
extended outages? Including a trend analysis in the current
annual reporting requirement may be sufficient to achieve the
author's desired results.
3)Is this information available now? The PUC Decision D9609045
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requires that the electrical corporations "record and maintain
reliability information specified in and provide it to any
interested person within 30 days of a request. The Decision
goes states "Reliability indices using a portion of the system
(circuit, division, region, or district), or smaller time
periods (no smaller than a month), should be recorded and
provided to any interested person upon request."
However, the information "for consumers" on the PUC's website
does not provide consumers with information on what they can
do if they are experiencing frequent service interruptions, so
it is unclear how a customer who is troubled by frequent
service interruptions might be able to find out if their
problem is a widespread issue. All of the utilities website
currently provide customer service contacts to help individual
customers with outages but the utilities do not publish
information on regional service reliability statistics.
Customers are not informed that they can request
region-specific outages information from their utility.
The PUC supports AB 66 with an amendment to provide the PUC
authority to suspend the program if it finds through a
proceeding or rate case that the expenditures by the
electrical corporation to provide this data are not justified,
or the program is not effective at improving safety and
reliability.
The author may wish to amend the bill to require the PUC to
order the electrical corporations to include a region-specific
trend analysis, including frequency and duration of outages,
in their annual system reliability reports. The region
specific data should be disaggregated sufficiently to
determine locations with highest and lowest reliability scores
but aggregated sufficiently to provide confidentiality for
purposes of security.
The author may wish to amend the bill to require the PUC to
require remediation if the reports repetitively identify the
same region with frequent service interruptions, with
consideration toward local permitting matters or a major event
that may be a higher priority.
The author may also wish to amend the bill to require the PUC
to investigate, by January 1, 2015, whether a trend analysis
of regional service reliability can be developed, regularly
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updated, and made publicly available by electrical
corporations or the commission, in a manner that provides
sufficient confidentiality for purposes of electrical system
security.
2774.1. (a) The commission shall require an electrical
corporation include information in the electrical
corporation's annual reliability report, required pursuant to
Decision 96-09-045, to publish and maintain on the electrical
corporation's Internet Web site a report annual system
reliability report on system reliability, including, but not
limited to, the frequency and duration of interruptions in
services ranked by areas with both the most frequent and
longest outages. The report shall be updated at least
quarterly. The information shall be sufficiently aggregated to
maintain electrical system security.
(b) The commission shall use the information in the electrical
corporation's annual reliability report, required pursuant to
Decision 96-09-045, to require remediation if the reporting
repetitively identifies the same region. In requiring
mediation, the commission may consider mitigating factors that
may impede an electrical corporation from implementing
required remediation, such as local permitting matters or a
major event that may be a higher priority.
(c) The PUC to may order the electrical corporations to make
trend analyses of regional service reliability more frequent
and make those analyses publicly available by electrical
corporations or the commission, in a manner that provides
sufficient confidentiality for purposes of electrical system
security.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) (if amended)
City of Rolling Hills Estates
Ranch Palos Verdes City Council
San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) (if amended)
South Bay Cities Council of Governments (SBCCOG)
Opposition
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Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) (unless amended)
Southern California Edison (SCE)
Analysis Prepared by : Susan Kateley / U. & C. / (916)
319-2083