PA Consulting awarded Florida Power & Light Company with the National Reliability Award at the 22nd Annual ReliabilityOne Awards ceremony. Six additional utilities were also recognized for their outstanding reliability and resiliency efforts.
The ReliabilityOne Awards recognize North American utilities that excelled during the 2021 calendar year in critical industry categories such as resiliency, reliability, technology and innovation, sustainability, and customer engagement. Founded in 2000, PA Consulting’s ReliabilityOne Awards are widely considered to be one of the most prestigious honors in the electric utility industry, recognizing organizations that provide their customers with the highest levels of reliability and resiliency.
“We are thrilled to award the National Reliability Award to Florida Power & Light who continues to raise the bar with ingenious resiliency solutions. This year they focused on continued hardening of their distribution systems against hurricanes and storms with their successful Storm Secure Undergrounding Program by purposely shortening the restoration curves and improving restoration efficiencies, which was successfully demonstrated during Hurricane Ian," said Gregg Edeson, PA Consulting’s ReliabilityOne co-program director. "Overall, their work highlights a commitment to continually challenge the traditional ways of asset inspections and pushing the envelope in holistic approach of safely delivering value to its customers and stakeholders.”
PA analyzes the nation’s electric utility industry using publicly available information on the System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI), which provides the average outage duration per customer, and System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI), which measures the average number of interruptions per customer. The indices show a very slight decrease in IOU (investor-owned utility) average system outage duration by a half minute in 2021 to 122 minutes, compared to the previous year. Key to the utility reliability trend data is PA’s in-depth analysis, undertaken as part of the process to identify the top performing utilities and ReliabilityOne® award recipients.
PA’s certification and analyses of the utilities in the ReliabilityOne program found that:
- IOUs in 2021 saw a slight decrease in average outage frequency and a slight increase in average outage duration compared to 2020
- Average SAIDI performance of the ReliabilityOne award recipients decreased by approximately a minute from 2020 to 2021. ReliabilityOne award recipients’ average SAIDI is 50 percent lower, or about 59 minutes better, than the average US IOU’s SAIDI
- ReliabilityOne award recipients experienced 35 percent lower SAIFI than the average US IOU
- Utilities are working to meet broader climate change, sustainability and clean economy goals and objectives by incorporating electric vehicles, electrified buildings, ports, and distribution interconnected resources into reliable operations
- Utilities are using technologies which provide more comprehensive situational awareness of their service territory, their assets, and customers. Using drones, imagery sourced from assets that range from satellites to dash-mounted iPhones, improved weather forecasting, and fire propagation models allows utilities to make better and more informed decisions regarding restoration prioritization, maintenance, and repair.
PA recognized regional award recipients from utilities across the U.S., based on overall system-wide SAIDI and SAIFI performance. Regional awards criteria reflect unique challenges for utilities serving metropolitan locations and those serving suburban and rural locations. Additional categories honored utilities for Outstanding System Resiliency, Outstanding Grid Sustainability, Outstanding Technology and Innovation, and Outstanding Customer Engagement.
The list of all award recipients is as follows:
National ReliabilityOne Award recipient:
The ReliabilityOne National Reliability Award was presented to Florida Power & Light Company
The ReliabilityOne National Reliability Award goes to the utility that showcases a focus on customer service, technology deployment, operational successes, and data and analytics. Florida Power & Light Company continue to provide excellent outage restoration practices, real time situational awareness, sophisticated fault locating technology, comprehensive data capture, security review and analytics, proactive customer outreach programs, and innovative customer self-serve options. In 2021, their successful deployment of the Storm Secure Undergrounding Program was especially innovative, as was their roadmap and use of fixed wing and substation-based drones.
This year’s seven Regional ReliabilityOne Awards recipients are:
- West Region (Metropolitan) – San Diego Gas & Electric
- Mid-Atlantic Region (Metropolitan) – Public Service Electric and Gas Company
- Northeast Region (Metropolitan) – Consolidated Edison Company of New York
- Northeast Region (Suburban and Rural) – Orange and Rockland Utilities
- Southeast Region (Metropolitan) – Florida Power & Light Company
- Midwest Region (Metropolitan) – Commonwealth Edison
- Mountain Region (Suburban and Rural) – Public Service Company of New Mexico
- ReliabilityOne® Award recipients for specific areas of outstanding performance are:
- Outstanding Customer Engagement – Orange and Rockland Utilities
- Outstanding Technology and Innovation – Consolidated Edison Company of New York
- Outstanding Grid Sustainability – San Diego Gas & Electric
- Outstanding System Resiliency – Commonwealth Edison
The awards reception was held at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte before an audience that included energy industry experts and senior management of leading utilities.
