E&E News by POLITICO: How cheap and reliable is the grid? Check FERC’s website.
Karen Onaran, CEO of the Electricity Consumers Resource Council, called the redesign “a nice feature” but had some reservations that consumers may draw the wrong conclusions from the data without appropriate context.
“These are retail rates which are not under FERC jurisdiction,” Onaran wrote in an email. “There is a brief explanation that states are ultimately responsible for rates, but will the general public read/pick up that nuance?”
She pointed to two industry metrics that are on FERC’s website — the System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI), which measures the amount of time there are power outages, and the System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI), which shows the total individual instances of outages.
“As far as the reliability data, again a good comparison tool, but SAIDI and SAIFI are such wonky industry concepts,” Onaran said.
“Will someone from Florida think their utility is a terrible performer compared to D.C. without realizing those numbers reflect outages that happened due to hurricanes or other frequent storms that year?” Onaran asked.