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Marietta BLW reports steady reliability in 2024 despite tree-related outages
Summary
Marietta Board of Lights and Water staff reported annual electric reliability metrics for calendar year 2024, showing average customer outage time of about two hours and most large outages caused by trees; staff outlined automation projects aimed at improving restore times.
Marietta Board of Lights and Water electric staff presented the utility’s 2024 reliability summary, saying the average customer experienced roughly 2 hours and 8 minutes without power over the year and that the average outage restoration time was about 75 minutes.
The report, delivered by a utility operations presenter identified in the meeting as Eric (BLW staff), showed system metrics used in the industry: total outage minutes, distinct customers affected, average outage duration (SAIDI), average number of outages per customer (SAIFI), and momentary operations. Eric said Marietta customers had power 99.975% of the time in 2024 and that the system design goal is to reduce SAIDI toward a target that would equate to “four nines” of availability, which would require a SAIDI of about 50 minutes per year.
Why it matters: the figures are the primary measures utilities and regulators use to judge service reliability and restoration performance. Board members asked whether Marietta’s performance compares to state and national peers; staff showed Department of Energy and industry-group comparisons indicating Marietta generally outperformed similarly sized utilities and the national average but noted Georgia statewide numbers have trended higher.
Staff said tree- and limb-related events remain the single largest and fastest-growing cause of outages. The presentation separated those outages into incidents that were “unavoidable” (for example, an entire tree falling) and those classified as trimmable. Eric said trimming crews target the trimmable category to reduce future outages.
Staff highlighted targeted infrastructure investments underway or planned: an automated distribution fault isolation and restoration (FDIR) project designed to reduce customers affected per outage through automated switching, and other automation projects that shrink outage impacts even if they do not eliminate outages entirely. Eric pointed to specific feeders with the worst outage counts and explained that some feeder metrics were driven by single, severe events (for example, a pole failure that produced a long outage on one feeder).
Board members asked about transmission outages and whether they appear in the report. Eric said transmission events are tracked separately and excluded from this presentation because the local utility cannot directly control transmission providers; staff offered to provide those transmission numbers on request.
The presentation included geographic references to neighborhoods by feeder number and invited board members to request detailed location data by e-mail. Staff also confirmed assigned-service territory from the 1974 Territorial Act applies in parts of the Town Center area, answering a question about whether a downtown commercial outage reflected customer choice or assigned territory.
Board members praised response times to particular incidents, including a multi-break event after an ice storm that required crews to repair multiple locations overnight. Eric closed by inviting any additional questions and offering to provide feeder-level details on request.
