ALBANY – Orange and Rockland Utilities was the only major utility
in New York that did not meet its reliability targets in 2015, the New
York State Public Service Commission staff reported.
“The overall statewide duration, or the length of time power was
out including major storms, was one of the lowest in the last 10 years,”
said Commission Chairwoman Audrey Zibelman. “Despite several significant
storms, all outages were restored in less than 72 hours.”
Orange and Rockland had an average customer outage duration of 2.44 hours
for the year, above its target of 1.85 hours. As a result, O&R will
forgo $1.2 million in future revenues, which will be used as a credit
for the benefit of customers in future rate cases.
The report said O&R was not able to meet its outage duration target
largely because of a failure at a transmission substation on December
5, 2015. That one event impacted over 45,000 customers, accounting for
20 percent of the customers interrupted in 2015 and 43 percent of the
year’s hours of interruption.
Following that incident, an investigation into the cause was conducted
by staff and corrective actions were taken to prevent a similar event
in the future.
O&R and parent company Con Edition saw its reliability performance
stay the same or improve last year as well as remain in line with historical
averages.
New York State Electric and Gas and Central Hudson Gas and Electric saw
a greater number of outages in 2015 than the previous year, as well as
their five-year averages.
