BILL ANALYSIS � 1
SENATE ENERGY, UTILITIES AND COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE
ALEX PADILLA, CHAIR
AB 66 - Muratsuchi Hearing Date:
June 18, 2013 A
As Amended: June 11, 2013 FISCAL B
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DESCRIPTION
Current law requires the California Public Utilities Commission
(CPUC) to adopt standards for quality, safe, and reliable service
by electrical corporations (IOUs). The CPUC is also directed to
require electrical corporations to report annually on compliance
with the standards. (Public Utilities Code �364)
Current orders of the CPUC require electrical corporations to
report reliability information to the CPUC annually. (Decision
96-09-045)
This bill would require that within an annual reliability report,
IOUs list the frequency and duration of outages ranked by areas
with the most frequent and longest outages. The CPUC is also
instructed to use the reliability reports to identify areas with
repeated outages and to require remediation of the problems by the
IOUs.
BACKGROUND
In 1996 the CPUC established reporting requirements for IOUs that
include system reliability using data on the frequency and
duration of system disturbances. The reports also include
information on circuits that consistently perform poorly and
accidents or incidents that affect reliability. The primary
metrics that the CPUC uses to evaluate system reliability are:
System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI; minutes
per customer): the average length of time customers were
without power. It is calculated by dividing the total
minutes of sustained customer interruptions by the total
number of customers.
Customer Average Interruption Duration Index (CAIDI;
minutes per interruption): the average duration of the
outages experienced by customers. CAIDI is calculated by
dividing the total number of customer minutes of interruption
by the total number of customer interruptions.
System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI; number
per customer per time): the average number of sustained power
interruptions for each customer during a specified time
period. It is calculated by dividing the total number of
sustained customer interruptions by the total number of
customers.
Momentary Average Interruption Frequency Index (MAIFI;
number per customer per time): the total number of momentary
customer interruptions divided by the total number of
customers.
The CPUC recognized that system-wide data can mask more localized
problems and directed the IOUs to record reliability indices
according to circuit, division, region, or district portions of
the system to the extent of their ability. This information is
meant to be available to any interested person upon request. The
CPUC considers a minimum level of reliability determined by
historical trends within a given region. Thus, remediation is only
ordered when a circuit behaves differently than it had previously.
Utilities are required to report on the number of poorly
performing circuits with 12 or more outages in any 12-month
period. They are permitted to exclude from this list outages that
were caused by events where a state of emergency was declared. The
2012 annual reliability report by PG&E contains a list of the
circuits where one or more customers experienced more than 12
outages.
According to the City of Ranchos Palos Verdes, there have been
over 100 unscheduled outages from their service provider, Southern
California Edison (SCE), from 2008-2011. This count includes
momentary, sustained, planned, and unplanned outages. The city
also reports that there have been at least three fires attributed
to electrical service disruptions since 2005. During a meeting in
Palos Verdes Estates in 2011, SCE communicated that it has spent
over $10 million since 2008 in the region on repairs and upgrades
of the distribution infrastructure with additional projects slated
for 2012. SCE also noted that planned outages are part of the
process for the infrastructure upgrades.
Real time information regarding outages is available on the SDG&E,
SCE, and PG&E websites. This information includes the number of
affected customers, planned, and unplanned outages. The outages
can be organized by city, county, or zip code. However, none of
the IOUs appear to have a comprehensive publicly-available online
database of historical outages.
COMMENTS
1. Author's Purpose. The author's office has found that there
are cities with a large number of outages, but it is not
clear if these cities experience more outages than other
regions. The author's office has also been contacted by
industry businesses that have experienced power surges and
fluctuations. Some industries, such as oil refining, require
a steady and consistent level of power for safety reasons,
and power fluctuations can trigger automatic safety
procedures and reduce productivity. For these reasons, the
author seeks to add reliability information based on
geographical location to the IOU annual reliability reports.
The intention is to increase transparency and inform
customers about reliability in their service territories. In
addition, the author seeks to identify problematic regions
for remediation.
2. Rankings . Service reliability varies between regions for
many reasons. Some reasons are attributable to the IOUs'
responsibility, while others are related to inherent
difficulties in serving a variety of geographical and climate
regions. Because California's inherent diversity, reasonable
standards for reliability may differ between regions. The
utilities argue that ranking the service areas according to
reliability invites a perception by the public that
geographically remote or difficult regions can be served with
the same level of reliability as regions that are better
interconnected, regardless of whether those regions should be
served at the same level.
The problem stated above then begs the question: What
benchmark should the CPUC use when determining system
reliability deficiencies? In the past the CPUC has determined
a reasonable benchmark to be the historical performance of
the circuit. However, the author's intent is to identify
geographical regions that are underperforming relative to
others, and proposes the systematic collection of
geographical reliability data to inform remediation
decisions. The CPUC will still have the discretion to require
cost-effective remediation of deficiencies under this bill,
and the CPUC will still have to determine what benchmark to
use to determine that.
The ranking list conveys to the public a misleading
expectation of system reliability by forcing comparisons of
geographical regions that may not be comparable. Furthermore,
the ranking list does not provide a reasonable standard for
determining remediation. The committee may wish to consider
an amendment that strikes the requirement that the requested
information be ranked.
3. Context of Reported Quantities and Trends . Current reports
by the IOUs compare historical trends of system reliability.
However, this is done based only on the average numbers. The
significance of any change from year to year is not
demonstrated, because the IOUs are not reporting the
dispersion of the average, uncertainties, or confidence
intervals. A comprehensive trending analysis, such as that
permitted by the bill, would require more information than
regional or system averages, and must include variances of
those data in order to determine significance and inform
remediation decisions.
ASSEMBLY VOTES
Assembly Floor (75-1)
Assembly Appropriations Committee (17-0)
Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee
(14-1)
POSITIONS
Sponsor:
City of Rancho Palos Verdes
Support:
California Public Utilities Commission, if amended
City of Rolling Hills Estates
City/County Association of Governments in San Mateo
South Bay Cities Council of Governments
Oppose:
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, unless amended
San Diego Gas and Electric Company, unless amended
Concerns:
PacifiCorp
Kyle Hiner
AB 66 Analysis
Hearing Date: June 18, 2013