Customer Care

One of the ways we will improve reliability is by anticipating the needs of existing and future customers and incorporating them into our investment strategies. A Customer-Based Reliability (CBR) strategy has been developed to tailor reliability targets for specific customer segments by incorporating customer expectations in asset spending decisions. The first phase of the strategy, implemented in fiscal 2005, focuses on feeder circuits deemed deficient in meeting customer needs and expectations. A feeder is a circuit that carries a large block of power to a point at which it is broken into smaller circuits. In the context of the CBR strategy, the focus is on power reliability in the customer’s area and the feeder circuits can provide good indications of patterns of electricity consumption.

The second phase of the strategy will develop a more robust process directly aligned with the results from the Customer Plan, such as the inclusion of customer values for reliability gathered through a customer survey.

The Customer Plan uses customer value research to provide us with insights to increase customer value and service excellence. It provides a road map for managing customer value across all customer points of contact. As a result of this initiative, BC Hydro is focusing on service offerings of particularly high importance to customers and where satisfaction is lower compared with other aspects.

Improving the Measures of Reliability

Standard industry measures of reliability, such as Average System Availability Index (ASAI) and Customer Average Interruption Duration Index (CAIDI), are system measures regarding the system’s overall performance for power availability and duration respectively. They do not serve the purpose of informing customers about their reliability experience in terms of interruption frequency or duration. To enable customers to better understand and articulate their needs for reliable service, a new approach was developed for measuring reliability performance — one that takes customers’ needs and expectations into account.

As a result, two new measures, Customers Experiencing Multiple Interruptions (CEMI) and Customers Experiencing Longest Interruption Duration (CELID), will be implemented in fiscal 2006 to support the long-term goal of customer reliability. They will improve customer understanding of reliability, as the data can be broken down to lower levels of detail (e.g., from system overall to region, area, district, feeder or customer) or aggregated to a high level of detail. CEMI and CELID will be easy for customers to understand, as they measure the proportion of customers who have experienced multiple interruptions and their longest interruption duration experience. These new measures will improve customers’ understanding of reliability performance and will support BC Hydro’s alignment of investment with customer needs.

Major Storms Impact Reliability

Major storms are a fact of life in B.C. and provide significant challenges for BC Hydro in meeting reliability targets. We cannot change the fact that we have storms, or their impacts, so instead we focus on what we can control — how quickly and efficiently we mobilize a response and provide clear and timely information to our customers. Vancouver Island was hit by two of the largest storms this fiscal year. On April 27, 2004, customers throughout B.C. were affected by a major windstorm, with one-third of the outages and damage to mid- and north Vancouver Island. From January 7 to 9, 2005, major snowfall to south and mid-Vancouver Island resulted in the worst storm impact to our customers since 2001. Tens of thousands of customers, many in the Duncan, Nanaimo, and the Gulf Islands areas, experienced multiple outages during the three-day period. As BC Hydro crews and contractors worked to restore power, the continuous heavy snowfall would topple trees and snap branches onto the power lines again. Crews were mobilized from the north Island and Lower Mainland to assist with the difficult task of restoring power in icy and wet conditions, which restricted access to certain areas. In particular, some of the power lines on the Gulf Islands could not be reached and resulted in extended power outages of over 48 hours to many customers.

Improving Reliability and Protecting Salmon Habitat

In fiscal 2005 BC Hydro replaced the aging 25 kV distribution line crossing that serves the north shore of Shuswap Lake to increase reliability for customers in that area. These underwater cables cross through highly sensitive sockeye spawning habitat in proximity to the Adams River and Roderick Haig-Brown Provincial Park. Following extensive planning with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the old cables were removed and new cables laid into the same trench to minimize beach area disturbance and impacts to spawning habitat. Special precautions were taken to contain the movement of suspended silt in the water while trenching the underwater sections. The project was completed without incident and will be monitored to ensure that no adverse impact to sockeye spawning has occurred.

Benchmarking our Reliability Performance

BC Hydro participates in the PA Consulting Group’s Transmission & Distribution Benchmarking Study each year to assess our Distribution performance among leading North American utilities. BC Hydro also compares our performance against a composite of participating utilities in the Canadian Electricity Association. These studies have shown that we are a low-cost, customer-focused service provider with many of the industry’s best practices in place. The wires business in our Distribution Line of Business has been ranked consistently in the top quartile in terms of distribution expenditures per customer, and our customers have continued to express a high level of satisfaction with the reliability of the electricity we provide. However, our reliability performance does not compare favourably with that of other utilities, mainly due to BC Hydro’s vast service territory, terrain and vegetation challenges. Equipment failures, due to aging infrastructure and increasing customer density, also contribute to the declining performance. Continued effort and investment are required to improve reliability performance while maintaining costs well within the top quartile.

Average Number of Forced Outages/Unit

By Asset Class

	02/03		03/04		04/05		05/06
	Target	Actual	Target	Actual	Target	Actual	Target	Actual
Large	NA		2.4	2.76	2.2	2.26	2.1
Strategic	NA		3.8	3.40	3.6	3.04	3.5
Available Energy	NA		4.8	3.87	4.8	2.93	4.8
Thermal	NA		3.0	NA	3.0	4.33	3.0

Definition

A large plant is a station with capacity greater than 200 MW (38 units). Strategic plants include multiple plants on a river system, all Vancouver Island generating stations, and generating stations required for ancillary services (25 units). Available energy stations are all stations that are not classed as large or strategic (16 units). Thermal plants (9 units).

A forced outage is the count of generating unit outages due to equipment failure or other unplanned events. The intent of this measure is to track the reliability of a generating unit to produce electricity for as long as called upon to do so. Reliability is improved by reducing the number and duration of forced outages.

Variance Explanation

Average Number of Forced Outages is better than target. While it is still too early to establish a definitive correlation, the improved plant performance may be due to implementation of reliability centred maintenance practices beginning in 2000/2001.

Benchmark Comparison

Exact comparable benchmark data is not available. However, a recent summary of all benchmarking conducted for BC Hydro by Haddon Jackson and Associates since 1999 showed that all major generating stations performed in the top and upper-mid quartiles.

Asset Health Risk Index

Percentage

Definition

Asset Health Risk Index is the percentage of Distribution assets rated in fair or poor condition through an annual assessment of asset health.

Variance Explanation

Achieved target as increased maintenance spending has helped to prevent asset health from declining.

Benchmark Comparisons

No benchmark data available.

Reliability: Average System Availability Index (ASAI)

Percentage

Reliability: Customer Average Interruption Duration Index (CAIDI)

Hours

Definition

Reliability is a combination of Average System Availability Index (ASAI) and Customer Average Interruption Duration Index (CAIDI). ASAI is the percentage of time the power system is available. CAIDI is the average number of hours per interruption. These indices are electric utility industry standards. CAIDI and ASAI are reported on a rolling 12-month basis.

Variance Explanation

Reliability is worse than target, due to a major snowstorm that hit Vancouver Island on January 7 to 11, 2005, causing serious damage to the distribution system and resulting in multiple outages to more than 100,000 customers. The ASAI result means that over the 12-month period, the system was unavailable for less than four hours.

Benchmark Comparisons

BC Hydro is in the second quartile of Canadian and U.S. utilities for ASAI and third quartile for CAIDI.