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

ORLANDO, Fla., July 2, 2014 – Customers of many of Florida’s locally owned electric utilities enjoyed quicker repairs, shorter outages and fewer interruptions in service than many customers of private utilities in 2013, 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 measures the average repair time for customers experiencing an outage. For the participating locally owned utilities, the average time to repair outages is more than 15 minutes quicker than the average repair time for the next best performer in this category for the investor-owned utilities. Municipal utilities have led this category for the past 10 years.
• L-Bar measures the average length of a service interruption. Based on the L-Bar reported for the investor-owned utilities, the average length of outages for the participating municipal electric utilities was shorter than four of the five investor-owned utilities.
• System Average Interruption Duration Index measures the average duration of interruptions for customers on the utility’s distribution system. The average duration of interruptions on the distribution system for participating municipal electric utilities was shorter than the average duration of interruptions for all but one of the investor-owned utilities.
• Overall, the participating municipal electric utilities were first or second on four out of five measures among the utilities benchmarked.

“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.”

More information about reliability and the other advantages of Florida’s locally owned electric utilities can be found at www.homepoweradvantage.com.

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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.