Collecting and categorizing information related to electric power distribution interruption events: customer interruption data collection within the electric power distribution industry

Reliability of electric power systems remains a top societal issue. While transmission disturbances draw national attention and scrutiny, service interruptions at the distribution level are the primary concern of end-use customers and their regulatory and governmental representatives. Much effort has been expended in developing methods to uniformly and consistently quantify reliability of distribution service based on electric system performance. However, the results of a nationwide survey of recorded information used for calculating distribution reliability indices performed in 1998 by the IEEE/PES T&D Committee Distribution Subcommittee Working Group on system design indicated that significant inconsistencies exist in current data collection processes used within the industry. This paper discusses the methods and approaches utilized by the electric utility industry to capture the data and the benefits/detriments different approaches