Our appearance of careful management is just a careful management of appearances - the Power Companies

A great post from GorTechie writing at The Gormogons:

Power
Many of us here in the DC area are dealing with frustrating power outages. GorT lost power when the "derecho" storm hit late Friday night, regained power late the next evening only to lose it again Sunday afternoon (after partially restocking the refrigerator). We've lived in this general region of the county (2 different homes within 2 miles of each other) since 1997 and have experienced the breadth of power outages: ice storms, hurricanes, severe thunderstorms, and snowstorms/blizzards. The number of homes with generators has risen significantly in a direct response. It is unclear as to what the problems are when you listen to the Pepco (and other) spokespeople. Yes, they have hard working people focused on fixing the outages. Yes, they are bringing in outside help from far away. We, the customers, get all that and by no means do we mean to denigrate all that hard work that those folks are doing. Although, in the end, we're paying for it, so it is expected.

What I'd like to question is where is the state and local governments on this? Pepco (and others) are regulated companies by the Public Service Commission. As stated above, recent performance issues date back over a decade. GorT was without power for six days during the 2003 Hurricane Isabel, several days with various snowstorms over the last few years and we're heading into day 3 for this one with the expectation from Pepco being that we'll get it back on Friday, July 6th. If a severe thunderstorm can wreak this kind of havoc with a major power company serving the citizens around the nation's capital, something is amiss. If a PSC allows that performance to go unchecked for over 10 years, something else is amiss. We'll get back to them in a minute. The Washington Post had a solid report on the problems with Pepco almost two years ago.

Pepco has blamed the region's heavy tree cover for many of its performance problems. And there is no question that during major storms, falling limbs are a primary enemy.

But there is no independent ranking establishing the Washington region's tree cover as the "fourth most dense" in the nation, as the company has told regulators. Forestry experts estimated that the D.C. region's tree canopy is about average.

Further, in the few cities that Pepco says have a denser canopy than the District, the local electric companies have outperformed Pepco in daily reliability, The Post's review found.

So of course, the utility is asking for more money but not spending it wisely. The indented quote is from the above Washington Post article:

"We're going to be spending more money," said William M. Gausman, senior vice president for strategic initiatives for Pepco Holdings. "Ultimately, people will have to pay for these improvements."

So where are those improvements? There is a pending rate increase of about 4% (about $5.50 per month per customer) that would go into effect this month, if approved. This would be the second such rate increase in two years. Where is this money going? To the new "self-service" app? That's great, but given that it is largely a rehash of what they had on their website, they overpaid if they spent more than $50-100K on it. Hardly $50 Million. Now with a looming $68 Million increase pending, one has to wonder what benefits will be delivered. Furthermore, what have they been doing over the last decade that we're served by a company ranking at the bottom of their industry when compared to other public utilities in comparable cities.

At an August hearing, Gausman (Senior VP for Strategic Initiatives of Pepco Holdings, Inc) was asked why Pepco's reliability rated poorly. Gausman responded: "The largest amount of outages from a frequency standpoint are tree-related."

But Pepco's internal records show that in 2009 the company's workers identified equipment failures as the most common cause of outages, accounting for 44 percent. That was a 24-point increase over the previous year.

There were your shovel-ready jobs Obama: Go through and replace every pole transformer over 15 years old. Replace sections of line with more than five splices in it. Buy backup transformers and other equipment for substations and park them on site. Much much more -- the corporations running our power distribution system are loathe to spend money when the equipment is running. The problem here is that when there is the slightest excursion beyond normal operating parameters, there are multiple failures, the majority of which would not happen if the equipment was in a proper state of maintenance. I am glad that we have Puget Sound Electric -- very competent and proactive.