Cost of power interruptions to electricity consumers in the United States (US)

Abstract

The massive electric power blackout in the northeastern U.S. and Canada on August [14][15] 2003 catalyzed discussions about modernizing the U.S. electricity grid. Industry sources suggested that investments of $50 to $100 billion would be needed. This work seeks to better understand an important piece of information that has been missing from these discussions: what do power interruptions and fluctuations in power quality (power-quality events) cost electricity consumers?We developed a bottom-up approach for assessing the cost to U.S. electricity consumers of power interruptions and power-quality events (referred to collectively as "reliability events").The approach can be used to help assess the potential benefits of investments in improving the reliability of the grid. We developed a new estimate based on publicly available information, and assessed how uncertainties in these data affect this estimate using sensitivity analysis.

Value of Lost Load: An Efficient Economic Indicator for Power Supply Security? A Literature Review

“…The reason for this is that different users are affected differently by the same power interruption. A subdivision also makes sense since no marketable output results from power consumption in private households (Ratha et al, 2013), which makes it more difficult to quantify the costs of the interruption (LaCommare and Eto, 2006). In the following sections, the techniques will be briefly presented and their advantages and disadvantages will be discussed (see Tables 4 and 5).…”

The Lebanese Electricity Woes: An Estimation of the Economical Costs of Power Interruptions

“…Furthermore, the use of estimates from other countries is often inadequate. The second-case study-approach uses cost estimates from historical blackouts (see Lacommare and Eto [13] [17]). While the case study approach avoids the bias of the consumer survey method, its major shortcoming has been the difficulty to generalize the results because history will not always repeat itself (Linares and Rey [20]).…”

“…Given the availability of detailed data in these countries, most of the studies have estimated the power outage cost at the country level as well as the sector and region levels. In a case study approach focusing on the power interruptions that occurred in the US on 14-15 August 2003, Lacommare and Eto [13] estimated the cost to electricity consumers, indicating that the annual cost for power interruptions to US electricity consumers was around 79 billion USD. In Germany, Praktiknjo, Hahnel, and Erdmann [14] proposed a survey-based model to analyze the costs of power interruptions; Praktiknjo [15] used online survey data within a two-staged bottom-up regression model and implied that power interruptions are in average relatively expensive for residential consumers.…”

A Generic Framework for the Evaluation of the Benefits Expected from the Smart Grid

“…Translating benefits into money is essential for an investment decision and must be based on the aggregate beneficial change brought about by the smart grid project [47][48][49][50][51][52][53]. Therefore, to evaluate and compare past, present and future values, a baseline (or reference) scenario is necessary.…”