Municipal utility customers enjoy quicker repairs, shorter outages, fewer interruptions

ORLANDO, Fla., July 23, 2013 – Customers of many of Florida’s locally owned electric utilities enjoyed quicker repairs, shorter outages and fewer interruptions in service than customers of private utilities in 2012, according to a new report.

The report, compiled by the Florida Municipal Power Agency, tracks the reliability of the electric distribution systems of 25 municipal electric utilities in Florida and compares them to publicly available data for Florida’s investor-owned utilities. Measuring distribution reliability enables utilities to gauge their performance, evaluate procedures and ensure high levels of service to their customers.

Locally owned utilities excelled in reliability metrics including:

• Customer Average Interruption Duration Index, which measures the average repair time for an average customer. The participating locally owned utilities repaired outages 52% quicker on average than investor-owned utilities.
• L-Bar, which measures the average length of a service interruption. Outages for the participating municipal electric utilities were on average 38% shorter than investor-owned utilities.
• Momentary Average Interruption Event Frequency Index, which measures the average number of momentary interruptions per customer. Locally owned utilities that track this measurement had 60% fewer interruptions.

“Keeping the lights on has long been a hallmark for locally owned utilities,” said FMPA General Manager and CEO Nicholas P. Guarriello. “I commend Florida’s locally owned utilities for their dedication to measurement and continuous improvement of their system reliability.”

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Florida Municipal Power Agency (FMPA) is a wholesale power company owned by 31 municipal electric utilities. FMPA provides economies of scale in power generation and related services to support community-owned electric utilities. The members of FMPA serve approximately two million Floridians.