Investments and incentives based solely on broad system measures may encourage utilities to focus on making good performance better instead of addressing the needs of worst-served customers at the grid edge. The MPSC noted a “clear trend” in improvements in SAIDI excluding major event days since 2017, but this trend disappears when one looks at Michigan’s performance on the index including major event days. For example, the outage duration per customer served (the SAIDI index) for 2023 for Michigan utilities is 162 minutes when excluding major event days, but 1,093 minutes – nearly seven times higher – when including them.

Suzanne is an experienced researcher, writer and customer experience strategist who has been tracking trends and identifying best practices in the utility industry for nearly 10 years. In this role, she translates consumer data analysis from the Utility Trusted Brand & Customer Engagement™ studies into actionable insights and recommendations for clients. Tim is dedicated to ensuring delivery of the highest levels https://www.agence-enash.com/how-to-reformat-an-external-hard-drive-on-macos/ of service to his clients and delivering research insights that allow them to ‘move the needle’ when it comes to improving their businesses.

• In addition to our ongoing reliability and resiliency initiatives, OUC’s team works swiftly to address outages from storms, engage with the community and advance renewable energy sources.
• This reduces planners’ ability to ensure that future investments are actually addressing the most critical system needs.
• Cost benefit analysis may include comparison between capital investment cost vs their potential savings on cost due to outages.
• MEDs are defined by IEEE 1366 as days in which the daily SAIDI of an event exceeds a statistically defined threshold based on the previous 5 years of daily SAIDI data.
• The inclusion of more customer-centric metrics as part of a suite of reporting can provide a more complete picture that includes reliability experienced by worst-served customers.

Relatively, Michigan continues to be the worst state in the Midwest for reliability performance, and ranked 50th out of 50 states plus DC for SAIDI including major event days (outage duration per customer served) and 51st for CAIDI including major event days (average restoration time). For example, Ohio residential customers pay 15.38 cents per kWh and Indiana residential customers pay 14.94 cents per kWh, while utilities in those states also perform better on reliability metrics. The second-worst state in the country was Maine, averaging over nine hours to restore power. On average, in Michigan it took about 12 hours to restore power following an outage in 2023, over twice as long as any other neighboring state. Since acquiring C Space and Hall & Partners in 2023, we’re a team of 1,600 market research consultants turning complex data into strategic insights that empower businesses with actionable intelligence.

Impacts of Blackouts on Health and the Economy

When we asked consumers to identify the characteristics of their ideal utility, reliability was consistently named as the top brand trait—chosen by half of all respondents—followed by savings and value. Utility benefits from reliability investments include operations and maintenance savings and lower restoration of service costs. SAIDI – Let’s say a fuse blew, de-energizing a tap that feeds power to 10 customers and it takes 50 minutes to fix the problem and restore power and the utility has 10,000 customers. It’s time https://www.motonlegalgroup.com/business-purchase-agreement-pdf/ for us to rebuild and reinvest for the benefit of future generations, while also making sure our equipment meets modern standards.”

However, while reliability is consistently the strongest driver of customer satisfaction, very few consumers support a rate increase to strengthen that reliability. After an outage, 77% of consumers expect their utility service to be restored in fewer than 2 days. Increasing in number and frequency, these major events are shaking consumers’ confidence in utilities, driving the need for these companies to clearly demonstrate the value they provide, especially as rates increase. As a result of the assessment, EPRI recommended the establishment of a Reliability Engineering Group (REG) to make impartial reviews and recommendations on the prioritization of capital and maintenance programs.

OUC Alerts

• If we want to improve grid reliability, and do so in an affordable way, grid planners need to take steps to ensure that the investments they’re making will actually reduce the types of outages their customers experience.
• RMI can pursue the highest-impact climate and energy solutions because we’re supported by people who believe change is possible.
• For example, Ohio residential customers pay 15.38 cents per kWh and Indiana residential customers pay 14.94 cents per kWh, while utilities in those states also perform better on reliability metrics.
• SAIDI is a key reliability metric that measures the total duration of power outages experienced by an average customer over a given period, usually a year.

For example, if SAIDI is 120 minutes, it means the average customer experiences two hours of power outages annually. Utility commissions monitor reliability https://www.wisconsincentral.net/the-challenges-of-living-an-urban-life-in-wisconsin/ indices to ensure service providers are meeting industry standards. Frequent power outages can lead to frustration among consumers, especially in industries where continuous power is critical.