HARRISBURG – A record-high number of “reportable outage events” impacted electric utility customers across Pennsylvania during 2017, according to the latest Electric Service Reliability Report, just released by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC).
The annual report details performance benchmarks and standards for the state’s 11 electric distribution companies, including Citizens’ Electric, Duquesne Light, Metropolitan Edison, PECO, Pennsylvania Electric, Pennsylvania Power, Pike County Light & Power, PPL Electric Utilities, UGI Utilities, Wellsboro Electric and West Penn Power.
According to the report, there were 50 reportable outage events during 2017 – the highest number since PUC began collecting data in 1993, and a substantial increase from the previous year, when only 20 outage events were reported. The size and scope of those storms is also noteworthy, with 2017 storms disrupting power to 1.3 million customers – which is nearly twice the figure for 2016 and more than double the 2015 total.
Under the Public Utility Code, an outage event is a service disruption involving 5 percent of total customers or 2,500 customers, whichever is less, for six or more consecutive hours.
Nearly all the 2017 outage events were triggered by severe spring and summer thunderstorms, which brought extremely high winds and heavy rain. This is different from previous spikes in outage figures that were driven by a small number of high-impact storms like Hurricanes Irene (2011) and Sandy (2012), or Winter Storm Nika (2014).
The continuing reliability challenge posed by trees, including trees located outside the utility right-of-way, is noted in the report – as is the impact of increased storm activity. Overall, approximately 50 percent of the total minutes of service interruptions during 2017 were attributed to fallen trees or tree limbs (400 million customer-minutes of service interruptions, impacting over 2 million customers).
Recommendations offered by the PUC’s Electric Service Reliability Report include enhanced tree cutting and trimming-related initiatives; the accelerated replacement of aging infrastructure; and implementation of a new formalized and sustainable reliability improvement initiative to promote operational excellence. This was originally developed successfully for high-voltage transmission system operations in areas such as reliability, resilience, security, human performance, equipment performance and asset management, operating experience exchange and superior practices, and continuous performance improvement processes and training.
