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Contact: Ryan Lippe
(614) 466-7269

Consumers’ Counsel helps strengthen electric reliability standards

COLUMBUS, Ohio – September 8, 2010 – The electric reliability standards that utilities must meet are now stronger because of agreements among the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel (OCC), the staff of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) and three utilities.

The agreements set the distribution system reliability standards for American Electric Power (AEP), Dayton Power & Light (DP&L) and Duke Energy Ohio. Distribution systems are the facilities and equipment used to deliver electricity from local substations to homes and businesses. Reliability standards are the measures of how well an electric distribution system is expected to function, based on the number and duration of outages that customers can expect over a year.

“Through a series of agreements, three of Ohio’s largest electric utilities will be held to tighter reliability standards than in recent years,” Deputy Consumers’ Counsel Bruce Weston said. “For Ohio consumers this should mean fewer electricity outages for shorter periods of time. The OCC will continue to protect consumers’ interest in reliable power.”

The AEP agreement was approved today by the PUCO, while similar agreements for DP&L and Duke were approved July 29.

As a result of the agreements, certain measurements of power outages will be strengthened to hold the utilities to tighter standards. For example, OCC, the PUCO staff and the utilities agreed as follows:

• In the AEP agreement, there are more stringent standards than the utility had proposed for the average duration of customer outages and average number of system outages through 2012;

• In the Duke agreement, there is a more stringent standard for the average duration of customer outages than the utility had proposed through 2016. Duke also will be required to file an updated customer perception survey with its next reliability standards application and provide advance copies to the OCC and to the PUCO staff;

• In the DP&L agreement, there are more stringent standards than the utility had proposed for average number of system outages as well as average customer outage times through 2012. DP&L also will be required to develop a customer perception survey by July 2011, with advance copies provided to the OCC and to the PUCO staff.

In addition, the parties in the case agreed to have another review of the reliability standards conducted in 2012 (AEP and DP&L) and 2013 (Duke) to assess the impact that current changes being made in the distribution systems will have on reliability.

About the Office of the Ohio Consumers' Counsel

The Office of the Ohio Consumers' Counsel (OCC), the residential utility consumer advocate, represents the interests of 4.5 million households in proceedings before state and federal regulators and in the courts. The state agency also educates consumers about electric, natural gas, telephone and water issues. For more information, please visit the OCC website at www.pickocc.org.