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Commission debates reliability metrics after windstorm left 33,000 customers without power
Summary
Staff reviewed reliability indices and a January wind event that cut power to more than 33,000 customers; commissioners pressed staff on industry exclusions that can omit major events from comparative metrics and requested geographic outage reporting by feeder and neighborhood.
Glendale Water & Power staff presented an electric reliability report April 6 that summarized system indices and restoration efforts after a January wind event that affected more than 33,000 customers.
"We experienced 33,000 plus customers out of power," said Barco Durian, electrical engineering manager, while reviewing SAIFI (frequency), SAIDI (duration) and CAIDI (customer average interruption duration) metrics and the utility's restoration work (pole replacements, tree trimming and mutual aid from neighboring utilities).
Commissioners pressed staff on the way industry reporting excludes certain outages — for example, events that affect less than 10% of customers, momentary outages under five minutes, or interruptions caused by external utilities — and asked whether GWP could produce a 'real numbers' report that includes those incidents. "This makes it look like balloons are our biggest problem," said Commissioner Flanagan, criticizing the exclusion rules and urging more transparent reporting for resilience planning.
Staff said the underlying outage management system (OMS) can produce alternate reports and that the utility can include major events and alternate baselines when requested. Commissioners also asked for a geographic report that shows outages by feeder and neighborhood so the commission can see whether investments such as the 4 kV→12 kV conversions correlate with improved reliability.
Staff described reliability strategies including tree trimming (on a roughly 18–24 month cycle), a 4 kV→12 kV conversion program (budgeted at about $7 million per year), a pole replacement program (50–100 poles/year), cable replacement and installation of automatic sectionalizing reclosers.
What happens next: commissioners asked staff to include neighborhood/geographic outage breakdowns and circuit‑level performance comparisons in future reliability reports so the commission can evaluate the effectiveness of capital investments.
