NRECA Reliability Reporting Survey and the New RUS Interruption Reporting Requirement

The Power Quality Subcommittee of the NRECA T&D Engineering Committee has conducted an on-line Reliability Reporting Practices Survey of NRECA member distribution cooperatives for the past two years. The survey asks questions on the following specific areas of distribution reliability reporting and analysis: 1) tracking interruptions, 2) sustained interruption reporting, 3) momentary interruption reporting, 4) power quality reporting, 5) power restoration after an interruption, 6) interruption prevention, 7) system, and 8) operation even though this survey has only been conducted for only two years, there are some trends developing. This paper reports on the results of the survey, examines the trends that are developing and the implication of those trends. In addition, the Power Quality Subcommittee has been working on the revision of the RUS Interruption Reporting Bulletin and has submitted a revision to RUS for their consideration and publication. There are a few significant changes in the way borrowers are going to be required to report interruptions in the future (possibly starting in 2006). Borrowers are going to be required to report interruptions using the system average interruption index (SAIDI) in minutes instead of consumer-hours per consumer. In addition, the major storm category has been changed to major event and borrowers is required to use the IEEE statistical method to calculate a daily SAIDI for the major event day threshold. Also, the distinction between "power supply" classified interruptions is more clearly defined. We are encouraging all utilities to utilize this methodology for better consistency in how customer interruptions are reported and analyzed