Reliance and Reliability

Abstract

As we move toward full electrification for household uses, we will need to change the perspective of how we look at reliability and the reliance we have on our utilities. Current measures of reliability are utility-centric, focus on averages and may exclude large-scale events which cause widespread and long-duration outages. Averages are not good enough now (if they ever were). Excluding large events from reliability metrics drives specific utility behavior: restoring densely populated areas quickly to keep averages down, even if some customers in other areas or customers in pockets of more densely populated areas are left without service for days or weeks; discounting compounding harms from long-duration outages; and claiming that reliability is improving when the customer experience clearly is not.

To adequately measure customer impact as we electrify everything, the perspective that we measure reliability from should not be that of the utility or of the regulator – but rather the individual, the household, the business who is increasingly reliant on that utility service. We need to view it from the perspective of the person who has no power, especially given the energy justice issues that arise with long-duration outages.

After discussing current measures of reliability and how they do not adequately capture customer experience and impact (including, in some cases, death), this article will discuss how states and utility responses to increasingly poor reliability have been inadequate. Instead, regulators must center the customer when addressing reliability in three ways: first, by making more informed decisions; second, by expanding their idea of what can contribute to reliability, especially with regard to distributed resources and storage; and third, by allowing customers pathways to recover damages from their utility. The Article also suggests pitfalls for regulators to avoid as they transition to customer-centric reliability.

Keywords: utility, climate change, reliability, resilience, customer, rate payer, electrification, outage, regulation, data