2007 annual report - report on performance - reliability - customer - Distribution System Reliability Performance

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Distribution System Reliability Performance

BC Hydro was in the third quartile (based on all events, including storms, etc.) of Canadian and U.S. utilities for ASAI and CAIDI in 2006. This is due to a number of factors – we service a much larger territory with difficult terrain, we have more trees per overhead kilometre than most of the utilities in North America, and we have a higher proportion of overhead distribution lines than other utilities, which means that BC Hydro's distribution system is much more susceptible to inclement weather and other natural events. For fiscal 2007, it is expected that BC Hydro will be in the fourth quartile in terms of actual ASAI and CAIDI because of the severe impact of the winter wind and snowstorms on reliability performance. BC Hydro also measures customer reliability using customer focused indices that not all utilities use – Customer Experiencing Multiple Interruptions (CEMI) and Customer Experiencing Longest Interruption Duration (CELID). CEMI is used by a number of U.S. utilities including Progress Energy, Exelon and Kansas City Power and Light to track customer interruption frequency. Other utilities are also likely to use measures similar to CELID to track customer interruption duration.

BC Hydro has a cost-effective distribution system, however, we need to continue to invest in our system to maintain and improve our customer reliability, and are doing this through our Customer Based Reliability short term priority that embeds customer's expectations into our investment strategies.