BILL ANALYSIS                                                                                                                                                                                                    �



                                                                  AB 66
                                                                  Page  1

          Date of Hearing:   May 15, 2013

                        ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
                                  Mike Gatto, Chair

                    AB 66 (Muratsuchi) - As Amended:  May 8, 2013

          Policy Committee:                              Utilities and  
          Commerce     Vote:                            14-1

          Urgency:     No                   State Mandated Local Program:  
          Yes    Reimbursable:              No

           SUMMARY  

          This bill requires the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to  
          require an electrical corporation to include information in an  
          annual reliability report on system reliability, including the  
          frequency and duration of interruptions in services ranked by  
          areas with both the most frequent and longest outages.   The PUC  
          may determine additional, more frequent analyses are required.   
          This bill also requires the PUC to use the information contained  
          in the reports to require remediation as specified.  

           FISCAL EFFECT  

          Minor, one-time costs to the PUC in the $25,000 range, and  
          ongoing costs in the $65,000 range to oversee remediation  
          efforts.

           COMMENTS  

           1)Purpose.   According to the author, AB 66 allows consumers to  
            see quarterly outage reports from their electrical  
            corporations, while providing the California Public Utilities  
            Commission and Californians with readily accessible  
            information that can be utilized for better infrastructure  
            planning.  

           2)Current 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:









                                                                  AB 66
                                                                  Page  2

             a)   The top 10 power outage events based on  
               customer-minutes, excluding events such as weather,  
               declared emergencies, or disasters affecting over 10% of  
               the utility's customers.
             b)   Circuits in which customers have experienced greater  
               than 12 sustained outages in a reporting year.

            These reports are compiled and published annually on the PUC  
            website.
           
            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).
           Analysis Prepared by  :    Jennifer Galehouse / APPR. / (916)  
          319-2081